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2025-07-04
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1/1
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these hands

Summary:

Mi-yeong's child– your child– Rumi kneels before you, palms outstretched with her sword lifted towards you.

“Please,” she says.

Celine and on raising Rumi.

Notes:

while writing this fic i honestly spent the entire time thinking of the short story Mothers by carmen maria machado (check her out, I adore her work). just the raw, visceral imagery of dealing with a child alone while you're wrestling with the grief of losing a relationship is so so good

I made a celine playlist but i think the main songs that rlly capture this fic are never love an anchor by the crane wives, first love/late spring and i bet on losing dogs by mitski..

also shout out to anything so undoing by apareion for their amazing celine character study. when i was in the middle of writing my rumi fic i told myself i'd only write a celine fic if no one else had, but reading theirs inspired me to write it anyway 💀💀 its so good you rlly should check it out!!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

When she looks up at you with those bright, watery eyes, you want to drown her.

It’s a sort of terror that washes over you like the ground shuddering beneath you and yawning into fissures collapsing under your feet. You feel like a glass toppling and seconds before shattering; like ripples of the Honmoon snapping like thread pulled too taut, tears blooming like the gaping maws of demons.

You think of popping her head clean off, carotid arteries of her neck splitting with one simple swipe of your dagger. An effortless twist of bones bending under your soft grip until you hear the fatal crack. It would be so easy to plunge your deft fingers into her soft, small head– like the divot of a mellow peach– and press until the screaming lives and dies as her last breath.

A crazed, hissing baby before you, with Mi-yeong's eyes and her father's markings burning like radiation. You can see her spitting acid, jerking her head violently and snarling in your arms, demon child ravaging the fragile cradle of your arms. For a moment, you see nothing but a vile pink poison disrupting the calm of your beloved Honmoon– your beloved Mi-yeong. 

 

And then she giggles, and you are not left with a hideous demon baby, but Mi-yeong herself, lolling her head beneath your hands.

You choke down bile, but your hands, carefully, do not shake. She is a child, just a child.

God.

How could you kill her– innocent, untouched baby of Mi-yeong? How could you? How could you?

 

You never expected yourself to become a mother– not like this, never like this. But for Mi-yeong, you would shed your skin in an instant to be the exact thing she needed. You would have slipped your blade between the space of your ribs and welcomed the cold, comfortless ground, if it would have breathed life into her corpse and left her smiling back at you. You would have taken her place. You would soak these pristine wooden floorboards with your own fresh blood, if that's what it took to see her again and not be shackled to this pale imitation she left behind. 

You are not a mother, but Mi-yeong can't be either.

She is too dead for that, now.

 

You stiffen.

You look at her, the tiny, breakable thing still peering up at you with warm, wide eyes– Mi-yeong's, and a tidal wave crashes over you.

This child is yours now. She is in your arms now, and she needs your things– your love, care, attention. She is yours to hold, now.

It was Mi-yeong who was kind, who was tender, who pulled a freshly thawed child from her ribs. You would have given anything to her, and she would have kept the child and the things and known which of them kept the child alive and which the child wanted and which to have for herself. She would have known. She would have given it all to the child.

 

And you would have looked at Mi-yeong for the rest of eternity if she had let you keep her in your sights.

You watch her curl her tiny, fragile fingers around yours.

 

What a horrible thing, to have Mi-yeong’s child standing in her place.

 

—

 

Decisions are to be made. Here is the one that matters:

  1. Mi-yeong's precious child, preserved. Raising a demon hunter– demon and hunter. A moment more with her eyes. The child smiles, too. You have learnt to love before.
  2. A small casket made for babies after you thought that she would vanish just like the rest of them. They are smaller than you think they should be– than you thought they made. Here she lies: dead demon baby. You have never killed a child before.

1, or 2? Love or kill? What is the fallibility of your memory against the crucible of time? How can you save her from being a forgotten body buried in the depths of the earth? How much longer can you keep Mi-yeong, now that she’s buried underground? 

The clock is ticking.

Mi-yeong will die without you to remember her.

 

Mi-yeong is dying.

 

—

 

You do all the motherly things.

The visions of killing her go away as she grows from soft ripened fruit with Mi-yeong’s laugh and demon cracks stretching across her skin, to human– mostly human– girl.

Your hands never did shake, even when the thoughts became so serious you had to move into another room entirely. You still avoid looking at her markings, she is a girl– Mi-yeong's.

(How could you kill her?)

You swallow down the bitterness when she looks your way, the visage of a younger Mi-yeong you never got to meet. Your fingers trace over soft skin, baby fat lingering in her cheeks, her immediate giggles. She does not sigh, she does not turn to you like an executioner, she does not say, “Celine, I'm tired.” She smiles.

So you hug her, you smile back, you cut her fruit.

(She likes her apples as little bunnies and you cling to the fondness rising within you like a lifeline– these human wants of hers.)

You pack her lunches, you wash her clothes, you sweep the floors.

You console her tears, you tuck her in, you hold her hand.

You braid her hair, you twirl her in circles, you wash her face.

You teach her about hunters, about demons, about singing; her history.

 

And she smiles at you all the same, so it is Mi-yeong's precious daughter in your arms, not demon hell-spawn writhing in your vice grip. There is no rough growl to be found in her words, no sharp incisors devouring flesh, frenzied claws crushing bone.

You can almost pretend to be a normal mother tending to her normal daughter. You’re doing the things Mi-yeong would have wanted. You’re keeping Rumi and everything left of Mi-yeong with you.

You’re doing the motherly things.

 

You won’t lose her again.

 

—

 

She doesn’t even call you her mother– eomma, she calls you Celine, or imo– like she even knew Mi-yeong for long enough to notice a difference, like she can see the way you falter with every breath you take.

 

You are forgetting her mother's name, the way she laughed, the way she spoke. You want her to swim into your ear and live in the recesses of your brain, ready to be summoned whenever you feel her washing away like watercolour and ink. The fractures of your memory feel like rupture in your lungs, caving in your chest.

The weathering of her artifacts that you tucked away into your heart, your precious recollection riddled with salt speckles of holes stretching from each measure of your love. The gaps; overwritten by the rhythm of her daughter and the lilt of her song, a hollow echo of everything she once was. It makes you want to shatter your CD collections of loving croons, your perfect curation of photographs, and all the things making space in your house instead of Mi-yeong.

(Her plushies and her hair ties and her hairbrush and her earphones and her clothing and her stickers plastered on every surface of the house and her mirror and her notebooks and her solar powered lucky cat and her keychains and her highlighters and her fallen strands of hair and her mini electric fan–)

 

The ache burning a hole in your chest overflows when the moon swings its way up into the sky and you are left with yourself alone in the silence.

It is more than you know what to do with, hands cupped to your heart as you savour the tender burn of Mi-yeong's name on your lips. You mouth her into existence, endlessly looping a mirage of her beaming at you, beaming at you, beaming at you. You let it lull you to sleep. You only allow yourself to live as a Sunlight Sister when moonlight steals across your sheets; when the world is still because the child is fast asleep. You are a mother, now.

Sometimes, still, you feel like you are careening to a car crash with your child nestled into the backseat. You feel like she is still a baby; a ripe peach weighing heavy in your arms. She is too young, too little.

Mi-yeong's daughter is a demon, and sometimes it makes you want to tear your insides open and let her feast. She could rip you apart at the seams and expose the caverns Mi-yeong carved herself to the light: where she should have tangled her limbs into, if it would have kept her alive. Sometimes you just want her to be a normal human girl, and you, a normal mother, so you never have to worry about caskets and funerals and the sun melting into the ripples of the Honmoon, flare of gold glinting in the light.

You think that having this child in your arms, relying on your warmth, is a terrible thing.

(But you teach her to sing and you teach her to dance and you teach her to live long enough to kill.

It is a horrible thing, but you love her anyway.)

 

So, you are raising a demon. You are raising a hunter. You are raising Mi-yeong's daughter.

 

—

 

This is Mi-yeong’s child before you. Here she is: smiling so gleefully and humming a tune you taught her with a voice you trained.

Do the motherly things.

 

“Rumi, you have to hide them. The other hunters– they… they could hurt you, Rumi. Your faults and fears can't be seen– they could use them against you,” you say, softening your voice to hide the tremor of worry residing in it.

This is Mi-yeong's daughter. You can not lose her; you will not.

 

You hold her in your arms and pray it is enough. She is small enough to be engulfed by your form, but she is growing.

She is growing, and it terrifies you.

 

There is a world out there, full of demons and horrible, hungry people, who will rip her to bone and sinew. They will hurt her, Mi-yeong’s precious child.

You pledged your life to protect the world and the Honmoon, but Mi-yeong had been your world once, and her daughter is only safe when there are no demons left here. One glance of the markings glowing on her body will get her killed. They will lay her into a coffin just like her mother and the funeral will have you as the only guard and you will wonder if demons will erupt from the cracks of the Honmoon to take them from you and you will regret not laying yourself down there in the soft earth with them and you will wonder if they are cold because you always brought a jacket for her and they will have closed her eyes for good and that will be the end of that.

You push her sword into her hands, her first real weapon– you do not think of the canines and claws she was born with– like breathing out a sigh. She is Mi-yeong's daughter.

“Yeah.” She says, resigned, like she already knew your answer. She's a smart girl. 

Your wonderful, smart girl. She knows this is what must be done. Mi-yeong's daughter is not as unreasonable as her mother. You feel relief soothe your ache of loss like a cool balm.

This is Mi-yeong's child, here she is: growing, learning, staying.

 

—

 

This is my child now, you think.

She looks up at you, and you want to burn the world for her. You would do it, if it kept her safe.

Sometimes, you still dream of slipping your dagger into her chest while she is sleeping, and it is far too easy to pierce her heart and steal the breath from her lungs. You hate the thought of tearing flesh that isn’t your own, if only you could give your blood the purpose it sings for. You feel like a live wire, keeping yourself at arm's length and praying you don't burst and paint your precious daughter in her own blood.

Rumi, your sweet girl.

 

She says, “Celine, I hate this.”

You say, “Don't say you hate things so much, Rumi. That's so negative, it just makes you feel bad. Be more positive. You'll need that mindset when you're a hunter.”

“You're forcing me to do things I hate.” She complains boredly, rolling her eyes at you. She is growing, and she is moody now. She thinks you don't really understand her. She thinks you're losing her.

“You have to learn to play instruments to be a successful hunter, Rumi. You can't get by on singing alone.”

“But I'm tired– I just want to take a break!” She whines, like a small child again. You bite back a reprimand. She always hates it when you nag her about her work ethic. But she won't get anywhere if she doesn't understand that she's still learning– there is so much she has to learn before becoming a hunter.

(You can not send her off to die.)

 

“You can take a break in a few minutes, Rumi,” you say gently.

“You always say that–!” She grits her teeth.

“I'm just– I'm just tired! I hate this!” She shouts, suddenly. Your blood runs cold for a moment as you watch her storm out and into her room. You hear her door slam.

You feel like the rest of the house trembles with you.

Sometimes, you wonder if you really are losing her. You wonder what happened to the childish innocence, the enthusiastic obedience, the trust in you. You had settled into the comforting absence of demonic fury in her voice, always measured and melodic– but you are beginning to remember you are raising a demon again; not just Mi-yeong's precious daughter.

You worry that everyday another piece of her is eroding like the rough grain of rocks lost to the wind and water, and soon you'll have none of her left to hold.

You tell yourself that this moment will pass. You've had fights before– it's normal to fight. You'll brave her teenage years and she'll finally come around as an adult, accepting your advice and guidance again; just like you did. You would know when you're on the verge of losing her– and you'll take the crucial step to bring her back from the cliff face.

You boil a kettle of water and set out two mugs on the counter. You make chamomile tea and hum the first verse of the third song you ever released, replaying what you remember of Mi-yeong's voice over and over until the static lacing her words eases. You sit there and wait for her to come back to you.

She is your child; you raised her from fruit to human daughter.

You can not lose her. You will not.

 

—

 

For a brief moment, for 10 years, things are as they should be.

 

The vital moment to bring Rumi back to shore sneaks up on you, merciless and unforgiving.

“Why did you kill–”

 

—

 

It is a slip of the hand when you kill her.

An accident.

Your wretched dagger sinks into undeserving flesh with ease, and you watch as she sways, pain wracking through her body.

“No–no, no, shit–no, no, no, no.”

Your hands are too harsh, violent, made for breaking and not loving. You press your hands to the wound but the scent of iron is thick as the blood pours out like a river.

You can not lose her.

You look at the demon before you, cowering, sobbing, vanishing.

Why him, and not you?

She smiles at you, like she always did.

 

You lose Mi-yeong with her slick blood pooling beneath the two of you.

What a horrible thing it is, to kill your best friend.

 

—

 

"Why did you kill my mother?"

Maybe the heavens collapsed and the sky was overturned 20 years ago. Maybe, it is happening now. Maybe, you are about to lose your child for good.

 

“I couldn't kill you too, Rumi–”

 

—

 

You had always just wanted her to forgive you.

Whatever it was that you had done to forsake her, given her reason to stop listening to you, to grow tired of your earnest care– you would make up for it.

Whatever it was that you had done, you would learn.

 

—

 

Here is your decision:

 

Mi-yeong's child– your child– Rumi kneels before you, palms outstretched with her sword lifted towards you.

“Please,” she says.

It was you who taught her manners; taught her to say please. Somewhere along the way, she grew up before you could even cradle her soft limbs another time– she says please, now. Now look at her, begging for forgiveness like you’ve always wanted her to.

(Not like this, never like this.)

But it wasn't you who taught her to say it like that, pleading for more than you could ever give her, baring her neck to you like you had imagined all those years ago. How could she ask this from you?

This strong girl– yours. Her head is not a soft peach anymore, you have cradled her head with your own hands now. She wants you to slice her throat open and watch your– Mi-yeong's beautiful, precious child bleed out on the floor. She wants you to kill Mi-yeong all over again.

She has outgrown the baby coffins that are far too small to exist, and she is still too small as Mi-yeong's– and your– child. They won't have coffins that fit her. She is small enough to rest inside your ribcage; the coffin will swallow your daughter's body whole. The tiny coffins made for tiny dead baby bodies.

“Rumi, no.” You whisper.

You don't cry, but you feel you should. Mi-yeong would have, faced with her child kneeling on the floor like she owes you something– asking for forgiveness is not something you taught her. You never did. She couldn't have learned it from you.

 

You say:

“Rumi, please. Just listen– we can fix this. It'll all be okay, we'll get these patterns off you.”

After all, you have to fix this. You're well versed in cupping the broken pieces of your child and fitting them together for just long enough to tell her about gold filling the cracks. Your words, her sacred cure. You can fix this.

You approach her, and she looks like a wounded animal on the road, flinching in terror at you, the woman who raised her.

 

So it's useless, in the end. She is Mi-yeong's child.

She faces you with those fierce eyes that you are so immeasurably proud of. 

 

“Why couldn't you love me?!” Your poor, precious child screams, already hurting, already not listening, already leaving you.

“I do,” you say, desperately. You have to convince her. She has to stay. She has to let you keep her.

You do not want to see her shipped off in a tiny baby coffin– you can not, you will not. You can not let Mi-yeong die once more. Her precious child, here she is: begging, screaming, leaving.

“All of me!” she yells.

She sends a shock wave through the imperfect blue of the Honmoon, and you think of tectonic plates shifting and canyons opening beneath your feet. You think of the world ending by the benevolent hand of this child you raised, you think of soft ripened fruit, you think of a lifetime of mistakes and the sickening crack of a world splintering down the middle.

(All of this thinking is not enough to bring her back to you. Here is your decision–)

 

You watch your beautiful child walk away from you, back to her burial to pen her own obituary in destruction.

 

Oh, you think. A thought becoming clear to you at last. It feels like a searing knife between the space of your ribs and shaking hands with no hope of triage.

Oh.

You’ve already lost her.

 

You’ve been losing her since the day she entered your arms.

 

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading <3333 Please leave a comment if you liked it, i love reading them :DDD

Celine killing Mi-yeong accidentally is taken from a deleted version of the scene where Rumi asks Celine to kill her, where it also mentions that Celine accidentally killed Rumi's mother which is also why she can't bring herself to kill Rumi....

 

ok, Celine rant ahead:

I rlly think of Celine as someone who has been consumed by her sense of duty and obligations (whether that's as a caregiver, a hunter, or a best friend) and has projected this need to fulfill all of these promises and What Must Be Done onto Rumi, specifically because she is so protective over Rumi.

I think when raising a child she knows she's going to have to send into battle, who may very well be killed, Celine just can't reconcile with what she views as the simplest/best/"right" way for Rumi to survive and live out her life. Like, when ppl have/do/could die from demons, the stakes are so much higher, and it's so so hard to unlearn hatred that is continually reinforced by your elders, your livelihood and like everything you see around you (basically all demons we see except Jinu are bloodthirsty af and don't seem to value anything except violence).

Celine alr has so much prejudice + assumptions abt demons that she just can't let go of, so encouraging Rumi to accept her demon heritage is even further out of the question if you consider that being a demon would obviously put a target on her back to be judged/hurt. Like Celine herself is honestly afraid of this part of Rumi and she actually loves and cares for Rumi- she can't trust that those who don't even love her would treat her with any decency.

I think bc she can't let go of her prejudice and hatred of demons despite loving Rumi so much, she feels like the demon side of Rumi is something that has to be rejected or removed to ensure her safety and happiness.

Now, Celine has absolutely done terrible things to Rumi's psyche and self image. She was a very questionable parental figure and definitely wasn't what Rumi desperately needed. But I also think that she's just an asian mother 😭 – deeply cares for her child but hurts them so so badly because she thinks their survival and happiness only exists in the rigid bounds of what she dictates/has been taught....

if you read all of that thanks for coming to my ted talk. i have a lot of feelings abt celine as a parental figure.