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As she stares down Mira’s blade, Rumi feels her world splinter into pieces.
It had always been so fragile. She had lived her life with the knowledge that all it would take was one glimpse of her patterns to crack her life apart.
“Maybe they’ll understand,” Rumi had said so long ago.
“No,” Celine had replied. “Hunters kill all demons. Nothing can change until your patterns are gone.”
Rumi knows now that Celine was right, as Mira points her gok-do at Rumi’s chest and Zoey shakily draws her daggers.
But then again, it was always going to end this way, wasn’t it? It was always going to have been these two that destroyed her. Because despite her half-hearted attempts to keep them at arm’s length, despite every time she refused to go to the bathhouse, despite every time she heard them laugh together from the other side of a closed door, they had wormed inside her barriers and broken down her walls.
They are hers. Zoey, bright-eyed and sunny and so quick to laugh and love, is hers. Mira, who fights like a sweet war-cry and who had once stepped in front of Rumi when Celine’s frustration had reared too high, is hers.
And she is theirs.
She understands that now. She sees the choices laying before her and takes the only one she was ever capable of taking.
Her knees buckle.
Perhaps it would be a mercy to come apart under their hands.
At some point she had broken into a cold sweat; in the stale backstage air she shivers uncontrollably, kneeling there on the ground. Her patterns pulse, and in the flickering light she sees the horror in Mira’s face and the distress in Zoey’s.
“What are you doing?” Mira hisses. Her blade goes blurry, wobbles, and then clears again as the tears slip from Rumi’s eyes.
“If you’re with us,” Mira had challenged her once on the roof of a moving train, staring down the horde of demons spilling out of the gaps in the Honmoon, “Prove it.”
She’s proving it now.
“I-” She stops. What was there to say? “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You’re a demon.” It’s not a question. Rumi wishes she were dead. Better death than looking at the expression on Mira’s face and knowing that she’s the cause of it. “I knew you were hiding something. You looked me in the eye and promised me you weren’t.”
“I thought—” Rumi’s voice cracks. “I thought if we could seal the Honmoon for good—- I thought I could be fixed. Then we could be-”
“We could be nothing! You’re a demon, and you—” Mira chokes. “You hid this from us. You — I told you so many things -”
“You were my family,” Zoey whispers, and that is worse than anything Rumi has ever told herself. Mira looks over her shoulder at her, something like grief flickering across her face before she turns her attention back on Rumi.
Rumi sees the change in her. She sees the anger burn brighter, sees Mira’s eyes darken further, sees the way she shifts her grip on her weapon.
Mira had always been at her deadliest when protecting her own. It’s one of the things Rumi loves about her. And Rumi had always known that Mira and Zoey were closer to each other than either was to her. It had been intentional on her part.
In another life, in a life where she wasn’t half-demon, she thinks she would’ve chosen differently. She thinks she would’ve exchanged vulnerabilities with Mira, would’ve let Zoey coax her into the bathhouse, would’ve let the both of them peel back her layers of facades.
Maybe it was the same thing in the end. In every lifetime, she would’ve put herself at the mercy of these two wonderful girls, one way or another.
She sees Mira lift her gok-do, and she is relieved. Her eyes close. She tilts her head back, baring her throat.
She was a Hunter, born to protect the world through song. And so, in what she presumes to be her final moments, she sings just a little. Hums the lyric that’s been circling in her head ever since Mira and Zoey wrote it into Takedown.
A demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live. It’s so obvious.
She waits.
But instead of a blade, she feels hands cupping her face, bringing her chin back down. She opens her eyes to see Zoey, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Did you think—” Zoey’s voice breaks. “Did you think we wrote that about you?”
Mira looks equally stricken, reaching out with trembling fingers to touch Rumi’s shoulder. The patterns flare in response, but instead of pulling away, Mira grips her shoulder tighter. “And you sang it — in rehearsals, on the train — Rumi, you —”
Rumi’s hands twitch, but she clasps them tightly together in her lap. Your faults and fears must never be seen. Her eyes slide shut again. “It’s my fault,” she murmurs. “The holes in the Honmoon. It’s my fault so many demons are spilling over. My fault that so many souls have been stolen. My voice - I’m a demon - it’s what I do. Destroy.”
Zoey’s whispering no, over and over like a chant. Rumi isn’t sure what she’s trying to deny, who she’s trying to convince. Her fingers are so cold against Rumi’s cheeks, cradling her face with infinite tenderness. Mira’s fingers press into her skin with force enough to bruise. Rumi doesn’t think she’s aware of how hard she’s gripping, but she doesn’t mind. It’s more than she could’ve asked for, this privilege of feeling their touch one more time.
“I was a mistake from the very start.” She feels the truth of it settle on her, heavy and suffocating. She has tried to unrun it, turn a blind eye to it, deny it, her whole life. “Do what should’ve been done a long time ago. Before I destroy what I swore to protect.” She’s not just talking about the Honmoon anymore. If her presence, if her voice, is the very thing that creates tears in the Honmoon, then Mira and Zoey are in more danger the longer Rumi’s alive. She had sworn to protect them - protect her Mira and her Zoey. She summons her saingeom, the weapon shimmering and sharp in her lap. “Do it!”
Her voice is a roar. She feels both girls tense. The Honmoon pulses, glowing a sick, lurid purple. The same shade as her patterns.
Please. She isn’t sure if she actually says it or not. Please. It wasn’t supposed to go this far.
“No.”
She feels both sets of arms wrap around her. They pin her between them, in an embrace so tight that she can feel their panicked heartbeats. “But-” she whispers. “The Honmoon—”
“Fuck the Honmoon,” Mira growls. She’s crying now too, her wet face pressed against the crook of Rumi’s neck.
“Yeah,” Zoey echoes, sniffling from Rumi’s other side. “Fuck the Honmoon. We’ll find another way, Rumi. We’ll figure out how to keep everyone safe.”
“But I’m a demon.”
Somehow they hug her even tighter.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mira answers. At the same time, Zoe says, “You’re our Rumi.”
She breaks then.
As her chest heaves with great gasping sobs and her body shudders with the force of them, Zoey and Mira never let her go.