Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rumi doesn't remember the first time Celine actually told her to cover herself, to hide. She grew into awareness, already covered, hidden. She doesn't remember the last time she got anything shorter than elbow-length sleeves. 

Celine wore tank tops to train her.

She still remembers, a mental catalogue, unlinked to any specific times or memories, a series of moments. Celine running her hands down her face, the one that she always said looked like her mother, but with a push behind the words. And then pulling back as if burned once she got to the neck. A cut she started to carefully bandage only to let go, and leave her to finish the care herself. 

But in training, in sparring. Celine never held back. The only place she didn't. When the others joined them, the Yelling from Celine behind closed doors about being Careful, about minding her strength and letting Zoey and Mira tap out.

Rumi didn't get to tap out.

If she'd have died, she gets to yield, when Celine is feeling forgiving.

She sometimes wishes she wouldn't.

A series of bruises, a purple only slightly darker than those hateful vines growing along her arms. The injuries and failures merging on her arms. 

She remembers thinking that Maybe, that's the key, bruises from protection covering her shame. Her wrongness. If she takes enough hurt maybe the marks will fade with the bruises that covered them. 

But they never do.

Rumi spent her whole life being taught these marks were the parts of her to get rid of. To cut out of her life and herself. That they aren't Her. But the skin of them felt the same. There was no noticeable change running her hands from her regular skin to the deep purple marks of shame. 

Rumi was trained with her hands as long as she can remember. But Rumi trained with staffs and swords and whips and knives from 10. 

When she was 11, the marks spread down to her elbows.

When she was 12, she got her first free access to training weapons.

She figured there was only one way to cut them out till the rest of the group is ready and the honmoon is gold. One way to separate the marks from the rest of her. 

And now she had another reason to cover her arms.

But whenever her blades accidentally crossed into the marks, they still bled red. She still bled red. Her blood from the jagged purple edges. 

The jagged edges she saw on a man she was chasing follow a tiny child around a corner and come out alone. A woman in an alley, gone. Someone helping what they thought was just a person stuck out in the cold somewhere warm, now nowhere and a satisfied woman staring her down with glowing eyes of hunger and hate.

She trained harder and harder, tried so desperately to separate any way she could.

Once, she had been talking with Zoey about her notebooks, and something she said stuck in her head: 

“I sit down, and sometimes, I can pour out my feelings on the page. All the anger, the sadness, the happiness. I told you before, I always felt like too much. I could put the extra on the page rather than on other people.”

She had tried to comfort her friend 

“Zoey, You are never too much for me, or Mira. Not that I don't love your songs and writing, because it's Amazing, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to. We can take what you have to say.”

And of course, Zoey being Zoey, decided to be helpful in that moment, 

“Y’Know, you could try it too, putting your demons on the page. Not literal demons of course, haha, cause we can just stab those, but like, the kind you can't stab. Mira and I are here for you, you can tell us anything,”

I wish I could, she had thought at the time.

“But if you can't tell us, maybe writing it down will help get it out of your head?”

My head’s not the place I need to get rid of my demon from. She had thought at the time. She also thought it was worth trying.

Rumi still has that half-written piece of paper shoved in a drawer somewhere.

“We are Hunters brave and strong.

Slaying demons with our song.

When the darkness meets the light,

Broken patterns in the night.

Take time to cut out the wrong,

Hope its enough to belong.

We-”

It wasn't, she knows that now. But maybe she can make it separate enough to last till they turn the Honmoon gold. Mira and Zoey are always trying to do things with her, and she can sometimes. But there's always a rift, and there will be till she can get rid of these bruises left by the mistake of her landing in this world.

She cleans the blood off the edge of her sink, and quickly throws on her hoodie as Mira knocks on the door.

When she walks in past Rumi, theres a look on Mira's face she can't translate.

Just a little longer. It has to work. It HAS to.

Chapter Text

Another day of training stretched out before Celine. First, a spar as usual. Then many other tasks afterwards to complete. She calls out to her… Ward? Leader’s daughter.

“Rumi!”

A child (or is she?) runs in. She’s just 13, she's already 13. She’s so young, she's well into becoming an adult. Already has hair down past her shoulders. (Celine knows why). It’s naturally purple, but dyed hair, even in that colour, is more common now, so it’s not as much of an issue as it could be. (For her or for people finding out she can't say). For a moment, she can pretend it’s just her. Rumi, her… Lead vocalist and best friend’s child. But then the shirt sleeve of its- Her shirt bunches up, and there, on her arm. Roots, purple, spreading, sharp like blades in silhouette. Demon Patterns. On all that's left of her best friend. Desecrating her memory.

Memory. 

A memory of her last moments, blood everywhere, being asked to take care of it.

No.

To take care for her. For her daughter. Even with all the purple demon marks spiking out on the infant's body. 

Back in the present moment, Celine looks at her pupil. 

Rumi approaches her, training gear on. The new set goes to the elbow so it wont crease up in a fight. She steps forward, determined. Even her walk is near-perfect. 

She enters the circle, saingeom at the ready. A sharp blade being held against her by something mark- No. It’s Rumi, I can trust her to do this, we’ve already trained. She's her mother's daughter, anything else is temporary.

Celine wishes she could truly believe that.

She takes up the hwandos she had been using since her youth. The sickles are something from later. After everything with her fellow Sunlight Sisters, she went to farm and protect, and she felt like the sunlight was gone. Better to represent the moon, reflecting the remaining sunlight in the dark of the night, than the thing she could no longer be a part of, for so many reasons. The hwandos were chosen as a nod to both tradition, and her perspective on their roles. Hunters are warriors, fighters, usually well known and yet secret. But ultimately, they are soldiers in the battle against Gwi-ma and all demons. She's failed her duties once, (but whether that was in not slaying Rumi or in what happened with her mother even she cannot say) she will not again.

They are both standing, ready, with Rumi waiting to be told to begin. It’s time she learned: demons don't wait for you to be ready to attack (this one does), she has to be ready at all times.

She rushes forwards, slicing diagonally towards Rumi’s torso, but it’s redirected away as her second blade comes up from the lower diagonal slicing, Rumi dodges to the side. 

A feint works just as well if she's also trying to hit with both strikes (a spar works even better if she's trying to hurt)

Rumi steps into the dodge, rotating her blade around the hwando, using the curve of Celine's sword to pull it out of alignment, and disconnects, stabbing at her. 

Just like every time Rumi comes at her with weapons, a small part of Celine wonders; 

is this, now, the moment where Rumi reveals herself and goes for a kill? A larger part of her knows that will never happen.

But wishes it would.

It would make everything so much simpler, wouldn't it?

No. Harming anything with that face, those eyes, that hair (though the purple makes it easier), would never be easy, even if it was sucking out a baby’s soul right in front of her. 

And Rumi was… Rumi. As much as she fails to live up to her mother, (Celine frequently wonders if this is a statement on her old partner’s unattainable quality or the interference of demon heritage. She usually ends up deciding it must be both), she does her best, pushes herself, and never asks for anything. But that's not enough. She needs to eat, breathe, and sleep demon hunting (how can she? When she’s lost the fight against demons since her birth). 

And isn't that exactly what a demon would do? Guise itself as it's own enemy till she lets her guard down?

It doesn't matter either way, her duty is to slay demons.

So she steps into and to the side of the stab, dragging Rumi's arm past her and running her Hwando along her arm and torso. Rumi stumbles, blood leaking out of her, as she falls to the ground, still clutching her sword. 

Celine puts her other Hwando, the one not bloodied, under Rumi's chin at a weak point in the neck, and Rumi says 

“I yield.”

Celine moves her blade away from her jaw.

“Next time, use your alternate arm to disengage my blade from your neck and roll up to stab me, Here." she says pointing at a spot below her ribs. "Go and get cleaned up, I don't want your sword or the ground here covered in blood."

That blood, seeping into and dripping along the cut on her arm and side. Red spreading from the wound like people escaping a sinking ship. Like Rumi’s humanity couldn't get away from the demon within fast enough. With the clothes hanging open where Rumi was cut, Celine can see other scars as Rumi walks away, along her… demon patterns, new and old, tracing the lines of the intrusions onto the body of the child.

If only it were that easy. Just cut out the parts of demon attached to her. Unfortunately, she didn't know whether the blood and resemblance was an indication of deeper existence. A child stained by demon, or just the vestiges of relation to Her that clung on.

Celine thinks she loves Rumi. But she can't tell, could never, and probably never will, which she hates more: the remnants of demon for being part of Rumi, or the remnants of her leader, for being part of a demon. 

Chapter Text

Bobby knows he doesn't do as much as most managers. Celine, and then more recently the girls, take care of musical accompaniment, writing, recording, mixing, editing, and release schedules for the music, as well as budget and stunt coordination. Bobby basically just does live event planning (well, aside from the things he's just mentioned), press, and PR. But he likes to think he's there for the girls if they need him. He tries to make sure they take breaks, have time to themselves, that they get to express themselves and enjoy food. The previous idol group he managed had a strictly balanced diet and exercise routine. Huntrix, well, whatever they were doing it kept them very fit, so he didn't really bother with all that side of image management. He was glad too, because he never really liked doing that kind of thing anyway, it didn't feel right. 

All this to say, he cares about his girls, even if he’s not as all-knowing as most other Idol group managers. 

But he's not ignorant, or gullible. He knows there are things Huntrix does at all hours unrelated to their Idol careers. Things that keep them very in shape and make all the stunt work they do look easy. Things that leave them covering themselves in makeup and bandages and sometimes Mira and/or Zoey acting injured afterwards. Things that give them mixed looks of exhaustion and satisfaction when they get back from whatever it is. But they seem to enjoy it, it doesn't get in the way of their Idol work (most of the time), and it seems important to them, so he leaves it be.

Rumi? Well Rumi is another matter entirely. Oh, she goes on these excursions too. That's not the problem. No, the problem is, no matter how sore or injured the other two seem, Rumi would go and perform and act like she normally does. It doesn't sound like a problem, he knows, and would normally even reassure him, except, well, Rumi is Rumi. She once had a stage light fall on her during a concert, and as everyone panicked, she rolled it off her leg and continued the concert, including choreo, for the remaining 45 minutes of showtime. Heck, she had to be pressured not to do the usual encore so a doctor could check her leg. 

Which was horrifying when they found out it had been broken and she’d just been performing on it anyway. He, Mira, and Zoey had to pull every trick in the book to get her to take enough time off to heal, and even then they eventually had to give up and let her get back to performing after much less time than they or the Idol’s medical advisor had wanted. (Of course the fans were a mix of dazzlingly impressed and horrified, and the venue had some serious issues for a bit, but that all worked out.) 

Another thing: when he took over managing them from Celine he was honored of course, and he wanted to make sure he was doing so as she wanted, so he kept his eyes on how she interacted with the girls.

She was courteous, patient, and informative, usually imparting useful information for both their music and their position as Idols.

Or at least, that's what it seemed like, but the more he watched, the more he saw that was only with Zoey and Mira.

It made sense to him at first, she raised Rumi to be a successor to her and her fellow Sunlight Sister, Rumi probably knew all this already. At least, that's what he thought at first. But whenever she interacted directly with Rumi, the less public the interaction, the more… curt and conflicted it seemed to be. She didn't look Rumi in the face, ever. She would issue harsh criticism of things done even better than those which she'd called perfect when Zoey and Mira had done them. Most damning, the only time he's ever seen her touch Rumi was to try and correct a loose costume shirt. She attempted to adjust it higher on Rumi's shoulder, and when it slipped back down, immediately summoned the costumer to go with her and Rumi to a dressing room to “fix it”. Rumi flinched and looked down when she said that. 

Rumi always wore long sleeves. The first time he had met her, she was wearing elbow length, and he had seen press with that length for a while, but for their debut: long sleeves, and he never saw her in anything else again.

She could just be making a modesty and a style choice, like she had said a million times when asked. But she always looked so… uncomfortable with the question, it seemed even the other girls noticed and had long since banned the question of why from Q&As & Interviews. And even in private, never anything less than long sleeves anymore.

He didn't want to assume. The Sunlight Sisters were known to have martial arts training in addition to their dance backgrounds, and he knew Rumi had been trained by Celine in the same way, everyone knew that. She even still went back and kept up her studies with her.

But he still had a pit in his stomach when she came back from the latest excursion and was wearing a dark red sleeved shirt not at all matching her usual colours. And it was wet and dark on part of her sleeve. 

She was acting ok, smiling and doing the usual rehearsal flawlessly. 

But Rumi has a high (he really hoped it was natural) pain tolerance, and is a workaholic. And is even more closed off than Mira. So he does his best to let her know he has her back, that he’s there for her, whoever or whatever the circumstances, leaves some bandages and antiseptic in her dressing room, and desperately hopes that he's wrong.

The next time he's in her dressing room, he spots them, used up, packaging in the trash, and her vanity table having been freshly cleaned.

He really hopes she is talking to Zoey and Mira. He may be just a manager, but he loves his girls. He hates that one of them is hurting this much, and not saying anything to him.

He only hopes she opens up before something even worse happens.