Archive of Our Own ^beta

(It’s a mistake that never should have happened.)

The early mornings are almost always reserved for her and Celine; Zoey is the opposite of a morning person, and Mira likes sleeping in even if she won’t admit it, so Rumi is the one out of them who basks in the first hours of sunlight. Celine is another early-riser, probably where Rumi has gotten the habit from, so she’ll spend a few minutes with her before going outside to run drills until Mira wakes up to join her—after breakfast, which is apparently the most important meal of the day, but Rumi quite frankly doesn’t buy it. Zoey wakes up last, mostly midway through breakfast, and then they can actually spar together. 

Not every single day is a sparring day, but Rumi encourages them to at least compromise and have it be every other day, because keeping up the habit is necessary, and the need to be perfect is always hanging over all of their heads. Turning the honmoon gold belongs to them, and it won’t happen if any one of them ends up lagging behind.

That’s why, despite having the worst headache she’s ever had, Rumi is busy running through drills with Zoey. Demons won’t wait for anything and will most certainly not play fair, and Rumi is still able to stand relatively well. The early morning provides some relief, since the sun is just barely poking through the sky. It’s nothing short of a miracle that Zoey is awake this early, and Rumi jumped on the opportunity to warm up with her for once. This part is almost always spent with Mira, which tends to go easier for her; Mira’s woldo is hardly in the same category as her saingeom, but they’re both decidedly not long-ranged weapons—unless, of course, they need to be—unlike Zoey’s shinkals. 

Rumi is quickly realising that early morning Zoey is an entirely different person (Mira has helpfully suggested the name Demon Zoey, Rumi offered up Shadow Zoey, because Demon Zoey felt a little too sharp in her mouth) who is noticeably lacking all the traits that makes up the Zoey she’s used to. Zoey is compassionate, sincere, genuine, bubbly, easily excitable. This Zoey hasn’t even laughed at a single one of her jokes. Not even a pity laugh. Rumi is somewhat convinced she may very well die today.

It’s a difficult dance they’re playing with each other; Rumi is sluggish and tired, slower than she normally is, and Zoey is less careful, just as sluggish, but with the added risk of her tiredness seeping into each throw. Her shinkals have gotten dangerously close to Rumi’s face a handful of times, though Rumi has been trying to use the air whizzing by her as a means to wake up a little more. 

Mira is settled on the porch between the both of them, carefully watching. She had told both of them to sit down—and was promptly ignored, because Rumi isn’t six and she knows what she’s doing—and then muttered something about how she’s refusing to “be the one to get the medkit when Zoey takes out your eye”, which is ridiculous, and her opinion is, as always, unwarranted and unneeded. Rumi is confident enough in herself to not become grievously injured, even when the world around her hurts to look at because it’s terribly loud and bright.

Zoey, at least, seems to be sobering up a little more. Rumi watches the way she bounces on her feet, hopping back and forth, her shoulders rolling back every few seconds. That means excess energy in Zoey’s language, which means there’s more energy to give, which means she’s basically back to being a person again. 

It’s this observation that leads Rumi to miss the glint of one of Zoey’s shinkals in the sun—actually, she’s kind of actively avoiding looking at the sun on account of the fact that every time she looks in that direction, her head threatens to explode—that is suddenly no longer in Zoey’s possession. It takes her all of two seconds to realise that the shinkal is directly honed in on her, specifically her arm, and she narrowly manages to stumble out of the way. 

Rumi is quick to raise her saingeom, her chest heaving with the strain it takes to move in a way that doesn’t immediately send waves of pain throughout her skull. She shifts on her feet, carefully eyeing the remaining four shinkals in Zoey’s hands, quietly replaying everything that has happened in the last few seconds. Zoey has thrown two, they’ve both been taken by the honmoon again. Zoey doesn’t summon them back to get a full six when she’s training with them, so there’s only four more she has to go for, and...

Maybe Mira was right about sitting down.

Unhelpfully, Mira chooses that moment to say, “Rumi. You’re literally swaying.”

“No, I’m not,” Rumi helpfully says back, shooting Mira the sharpest glare she can manage, which isn’t as sharp as she’d like, because the sun is right behind Mira, and it’s terribly, terribly bright.

“You kinda are,” Zoey tells her, traitorously taking Mira’s side. Rumi distantly notes that Zoey sounds less like Shadow Zoey and more like their Zoey, which is nice, because Rumi missed her. “You wanna get some water?”

Rumi crinkles her nose, shifting her weight from foot to foot. If this was real, if she was actually in a situation where she had to fight, had to kill demons, she would not get the luxury of getting some water just because her head hurt a little. They aren’t in that situation, and she knows Celine would probably give her one of those disappointed looks (which is funny, coming from Celine, but what does Rumi know?) and tell her to just drink the water, but...

“No,” Rumi decides with a gentle shake of her head that hurts more than it should. “It’s fine. You have four throws left, we can take a break after that.”

The past year of her life has been filled with this. Early mornings, hours upon hours of sparring, compromises in the forms of begrudgingly offering breaks even when she would much prefer to keep going, because she’s well aware that she can. The compromises have slowly turned from “Mira, you and Zoey can take a break!” to “oh my god fine I’ll sit down but it hasn’t even been a full twelve hours so I don’t get what your problem is”. Celine has been telling her that hunters work together with everything, and that listening to her other hunters is needed, that each voice matters equally. So Rumi has been listening, compromising, and figuring out ways to lie to herself and pretend that it all makes her feel closer to the two of them.

Rumi wants to tell them. She hasn’t brought it up to Celine and never will, because Rumi isn’t going to tell them and she already knows the lecture she would get for even thinking about it, but...she wants to. Mira and Zoey are the nicest people she’s ever met, even when their niceness borders on something close to smothering, or when it’s really not needed. Rumi thinks that, maybe, they would understand. 

Zoey eventually sighs, dipping her head. “Fine. But I’m gonna go through them fast. Like, super fast. We’re getting you that water break.”

Rumi laughs, which hurts her head, but she doesn’t regret it because it makes Zoey smile at her for the first time all morning. “Fine,” Rumi agrees, raising her saingeom up. “Come at me.”

Zoey was not lying when she said fast.

Rumi narrowly manages to avoid the two shinkals thrown on either side of her, hissing out a gasp when they just barely brush over her shoulders. She practically dives to the side when the third one is thrown, and then the fourth—

Zoey is suddenly in front of her, and her hands blur together, and Rumi hits the ground hard. Her saingeom tumbles from her hands, fizzling back into the honmoon. The sharp pain in her shoulder is enough to tell her that Zoey accidentally nicked her; the pain is hardly overwhelming, but it’s enough to let her know that she’s probably bleeding, and that she should probably get up. Rumi’s head swims, heavy and sharp and loud, and all very quickly, getting up does not seem to be much of an option. 

She lets her head tip back onto the dirt, raising both hands to cup her face.

(This is the part where it becomes her fault; she doesn't notice the way the sleeve tears when she raises her arms.)

Rumi takes a second to rest, bemused at the idea of bringing this up as her “break” to Mira and Zoey, though she’s already keenly aware of how they’re not going to like that joke. It takes her another few seconds before she processes the fact that it’s dead silent in the clearing. Another moment passes before she realises that her ears aren’t ringing. Her head is throbbing, but it’s hardly enough to drown out the world.

Rumi drops her hands from her face, rolling over onto her good arm, propping herself up so she’s sitting back up. 

Zoey and Mira are staring at her, and...when did Mira move from the porch? She has a roll of gauze in her hand, so she must have been inside. Rumi almost wants to laugh at how quickly she managed that, but they’re both staring at her all weird, so she chokes it back.

“Sorry?” Rumi offers instead, scrunching up her face at the dual looks of confusion and worry on both of their faces. “It’s—it’s...totally fine,” Rumi continues, more cautiously when Mira’s eyes narrow. “Um, it doesn’t even really hurt. My head hurts, I just had to...”

“Rumi,” Mira interrupts, her voice uncharacteristically hard. Mira has always enjoyed taunting her and poking her until Rumi snaps, but this is different. There’s no playfulness, no gentle teasing. Mira’s voice is sharp. Like she’s talking to a stranger.

Rumi watches as Zoey raises a hand, carefully resting it on Mira’s shoulder. There’s an unspoken conversation that goes on between them, with Mira’s eyes narrowing further, while Zoey only shakes her head. Rumi can barely process any of it, confusion weighing heavily on her, on top of the ache in her skull that only seems to get worse as the seconds go by. If her head didn’t feel like it would implode, maybe she would be able to figure whatever this is out, but it’s already too much effort to listen to them speak to her normally, let alone dive into the silent words they’re exchanging.

Zoey takes a step closer. Then another, and another, until she’s crouching down to be at the same height. Her hands come up to cup Rumi’s face, tilting her head to the side. It makes Rumi wince, but she lets it happen, mostly because something has clearly happened, and maybe she missed it. She could have sworn that Zoey’s shinkal only grazed her shoulder, but maybe it got close to her neck. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve had a somewhat close call during training—Mira nearly impaled herself on her woldo trying to show off when she first summoned it, and Celine has countless stories that she just loves to share about how Rumi was toddling around with her saingeom before she could even really use it, as if it’s her fault that the honmoon let her have it when she was young.

“Hey,” Zoey starts, her voice quiet. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“You didn’t, really,” Rumi assures her, keeping her head tilted to the side like Zoey clearly wants. “Is it even bleeding?”

Zoey makes a soft noise. “A little.”

“Sorry,” Rumi laughs, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m totally bleeding on you.”

“Yeah,” Zoey agrees. Rumi feels her fingers brush along the bare skin of her shoulder a second—

Rumi practically snaps her eyes open, thrashing out of Zoey’s grip as she throws herself backward. Her head screams at her in protest, but she’s up on her feet in less than a second, frantically reaching up, twisting her head as far as it can, staring at the ugly, twisting patterns that are on full display.

“No,” Rumi breathes out, her chest heaving as she takes another handful of steps back, jerking her head toward Zoey and Mira. “No, no, no, wait,” Rumi begs, quickly glancing toward the house, praying that Celine doesn’t come out, because fuck. Fuck. “No, I’m sorry,” she whispers, clamping her right hand down over her shoulder, raising up her left, curling inward to make herself seem less threatening, because they should be attacking her any second now, and maybe she can get another few words out to try and explain before that happens if she just seems a little less horrific, and...

“Rumi,” Zoey says, standing back up, her hands splayed out in front of her, as if she’s approaching a wild animal. “You should sit down.”

Mira’s eyes meet hers a second later. “You’re still bleeding.”

Rumi feels like she’s going to die. She is, she thinks, she has to be. This is going to be the end of her life, and it’s deserved, because she fucked up. One year. She lasted one year. Celine is going to kill her if Mira and Zoey don’t, but they’re going to, because they’re hunters and this is exactly what they’ve been trained to do and it would make sense for them to kill her and they should—

“Rumi,” Zoey says, a little louder. “Sit down.”

Rumi kneels.

They’re going to kill her. Does it matter how it happens? If she’s standing, if she’s sitting? She kneels in the dirt and waits. This is no longer a choice she gets to make. Understanding. A ridiculous thought that Celine would have been right to lecture her over, because, well, obviously. This was always going to happen if they found out. It was always going to end like this, Rumi knew that, she just thought she would be able to hide it for longer.

All very suddenly, there are hands on her face again. Her head is tilted to the side, and she feels her arm being raised up. It takes a second to process the feeling of an alcohol wipe being pressed against her skin before gauze shortly follows, carefully wrapped around the cut on her shoulder. It's quick and efficient, it takes no time at all, and it's the first time this has ever been done for her. It's almost funny. Maybe it would be funny if she wasn't going to die.

Then, quietly, she hears Zoey ask, “How long?”

Well. This is harder than them just killing her, Rumi thinks. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised, because Zoey has always enjoyed the hunt, performing each fight like it’s a sort of game of cat-and-mouse, and this is...the same thing, Rumi thinks. Just another demon to be dealt with. That's all that she is, and she understands that. Celine had never said that to her, but she didn't have to. Rumi knows what she is, and what that means. She expects it, she knows that it's going to come, she knows.

She waits.

“Rumi,” Mira presses, her voice closer than it had been, because, right. She was the one with the gauze. 

The gauze. Mira bandaged up her arm. 

Rumi almost wants to laugh. Great. The world’s worst cat-and-mouse game, where they’re apparently treating her like a friend before they kill her. That’s great. Celine would be so proud that they’re fulfilling all their hunter duties of taking care of each other while killing demons. 

“Rumi, I need you to talk to me,” Zoey says, her voice getting a little more insistent. “Can you tell me how long you’ve had these?”

“Forever,” Rumi rasps out, because, well, they’ve caught her. She’s been effortlessly caught in a trap, and there’s no use trying to gnaw off her own arm to escape it. She’s tried before; her patterns exist beyond just branding on her skin.

“Forever?” Mira asks. “You’ve always had these?”

Rumi’s head pounds. “My dad,” she mutters, keeping her eyes shut, “Was a demon. Celine’ll say the same thing if you don’t believe me.”

Which, they shouldn’t. She’s been lying to them this entire time. They should talk to Celine.

“Celine knew?” Zoey asks, her voice suddenly sharper than it had been.

“Of course she knew,” Mira snaps, scoffing a second later. “Zoey, water?”

Rumi can barely stand it.

She bristles when Zoey’s hands are off of her face, because it had been one thing to fucking wrap up her arm and talk to her, but it’s gone on for too long now. “What are you doing?” Rumi demands, cracking open one eye to glare at Mira, who hasn’t moved. “Get it over with already.”

“Get what over with?” Mira demands back, leaning in closer to her. 

“You—” Rumi feels her voice die in her throat. “I’m a demon.”

The words are bitter in her mouth, worse to spit out. Her head spins as soon as she does, sending shockwaves of pain throughout her entire body; she’s a demon. The next, all very logical, steps to make are clear. Mira and Zoey are decidedly not making those steps.

Zoey comes back less than a second later, holding the water bottle up to her lips.

“Stop!” Rumi hisses out, voice breaking. “Please. Stop,” she begs a second later, bowing her head. “This is—just stop.”

Mira’s hand is on her face next, thumb rubbing across her cheekbone. “Okay. You’re a demon. That’s great, Rumi. I told you to sit down and drink, like, thirty minutes ago. Can you actually do that for once instead of making more excuses, or am I going to have to shove this water bottle down your throat?”

“Mira!” Zoey chides. “You can’t just—”

“You know she won’t listen!” Mira hisses back. “And you—you can’t keep yelling,” Mira tells her, very pointedly. “Celine is going to come out here, and I really don’t want to fucking deal with Celine right now on top of everything else, so just...be quiet, please.”

The ‘please’ is unexpected. Rumi almost laughs, because Mira never says please, but as soon as she opens her mouth, Zoey is tipping the water bottle, and she’s being forced to either swallow or literally drown. Self-preservation has hardly been something she’s been subscribed to, but Rumi somehow manages to keep herself from choking.

When Zoey decides she’s apparently sufficiently watered, she backs off. Then, she softly says, “So, you’re a demon. Are you going to steal our souls?”

“What?” Rumi sputters, panic creeping up her throat again. For a second, things had almost felt normal. “No! I can’t even—I don’t think that’s something I can do, I’m not—I’m only—”

“Calm down,” Mira instructs, tapping the side of her face twice. “It was just a question. You’re going to have to get used to it. I have a lot of those.”

“I also have a lot,” Zoey helpfully agrees. “Like, um, you know, why did you hide this from us?”

“Celine,” Mira mutters.

Rumi looks down at the ground, her head throbbing. “Said you wouldn’t understand,” she murmurs out her agreement, squeezing her eyes shut again, because, somehow, her headache has only gotten worse. Probably not that surprising, she thinks, as her heart races so hard she worries it might manage to escape her chest entirely.

“We’re getting there,” Zoey quietly assures her. “I mean, really, it kind of makes sense, right? What kind of person actually likes waking up at, like, five in the morning? That’s gotta be a demon thing.”

Mira snorts. “And the weird tree climbing ability.”

“Dude!” Zoey agrees, laughing. “She scaled the house once when Celine wasn’t looking. And then she got down really quick, didn’t even make a noise. Crazy.”

“Unfair,” Mira adds on. “Tactical advantages.”

Rumi swallows, forcing her head up, staring at the both of them. The honmoon quietly sings all around her, in a tone that’s so clearly meant to be soothing. It’s soft, gentle, carefully weaving around her body and into her head without being too loud. She can hear Mira and Zoey’s melodies, singing right alongside it, as if nothing has changed, as if all of this is...fine.

“You didn’t kill me,” Rumi says, bluntly, because apparently she’s going to have to be the one to take the logical next steps here. 

Mira stares at her. Zoey stares harder.

“Why would we do that?” Zoey demands, suddenly looking angry. “Do you seriously think—who do you think we are? Rumi, do you, like, actually think that I’d...? I almost cried when I hurt you! I’m going to cry about it later! There’s just—it’s—other things have happened, so I’m not crying, but I’m going to cry! Really hard!”

“You’re still Rumi,” Mira says, slowly. “And I’m angry at you right now, but it’s...fine. We’re going to figure it out.”

Rumi feels her heart stop beating at the words. The first fight, the first real fight, she ever had with Mira, she had said the exact same thing. Zoey had chased her down and frantically explained that Mira didn’t handle these kinds of things well, that arguments were rough on her, and it made Rumi feel guilty enough for storming off that she begrudgingly came back. Sat down in the dirt, shoulder-to-shoulder, and quietly said, “I’m angry at you, but it’s going to be okay, eventually. We’ll figure it out. It’s not going to be forever, just...for right now.”

She barely even remembers what the fight had been about. Something stupid and inconsequential, probably about the honmoon or about being a hunter or something ridiculous. This is so much worse than that, so much bigger, and it’s...Mira’s acting like it’s on the same level with whatever petty fight they got into months ago. 

Rumi draws in a shuddering breath, burying her face in her hands. “Okay,” she whispers; there are no words that could possibly be enough to explain the dozens of emotions swirling around in her mind, and it hardly helps that they’re bogged down by pain. “It really doesn’t hurt. My shoulder.”

“You always say that, and I’m pretty sure it always does hurt,” Zoey mutters, hand coming up to cup the back of Rumi’s head. “How’s this?”

“Um,” Rumi laughs, which comes out watery and broken, because oh, she’s crying. That’s going to make her headache worse. “Not great.”

“I’ll get you a new shirt,” Mira murmurs, reaching out, fingers brushing along...her patterns. Just shy of where the gauze wrapped around her shoulder is. “Celine literally never has to know, so, let’s just, like, not tell Celine. Okay? Okay. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Get ibuprofen,” Zoey calls out a second later. “Like, twenty. Enough to knock out a horse.”

“Cool, got it.”

And then Mira is gone, and there’s quiet, and Zoey is gently running her hands through her hair like this is all fine and normal and okay, and Rumi is crying, and...

Okay. So maybe Celine was wrong.

“I’m also kind of mad at you,” Zoey quietly whispers. “But, y’know, um, we’ll figure it out. I’m just glad you’re not, like, evil. You’d tell us if you were actually evil, right?”

Rumi laughs, twisting her head so her face is pressed against Zoey’s arm. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” Zoey hums. “Good to know.”

It doesn’t take long for Mira to come back; Rumi can hear her footsteps thudding down the porch. Mira presses at least five pills into her hand—which in no way can be the normal dose, but Zoey still sounds disappointed when she counts the total—and then carefully hands her the water bottle from a few minutes ago. Rumi manages to swallow down all five pills, her head throbbing with the action, and then Mira and Zoey are standing up on either side of her, carefully tugging the shirt down on top of her other shirt, because they don’t want her to mess up her shoulder.

As if that’s the most important part of all of this. As if her getting hurt is the thing that means something. 

Rumi lets them do it. Even when her heart pounds at how close they get to her, at how Mira’s eyes linger for a little too long on her patterns, at how Zoey’s fingers graze her neck. All of it is too close to being too much, and it already is too much, but she still lets them do it, because they didn’t kill her. 

They didn’t kill her. They wrapped up her shoulder and got her painkillers and a new shirt. 

Rumi is half-dragged, half-carried up the porch a few seconds later. Zoey is the one who very casually talks to Celine, mentioning how Rumi is probably getting sick and how her head hurts, which is an ample enough distraction for Mira to continue pushing her down the hallway and to the right, practically throwing her into bed as soon the door is open. Rumi lets it happen, shifting into the pillows and blankets.

Zoey comes into her room a minute or two after, beaming widely, like she’s won a prize. “She’s going to go out to restock,” Zoey says in a near-whisper, her eyes twinkling. “So...freedom for a few hours.”

“Freedom,” Mira repeats with a roll of her eyes. “As if Rumi’s not going to be sleeping for all of it.”

“I’m not going to sleep,” Rumi protests. She doesn’t do naps, and even if she did, the throbbing in her head is too painful for her to even consider trying to go back to sleep. “I just...am going to lay down for a bit. Not the same thing.”

“Get your beauty sleep while you can,” Mira advises. “We’re going to talk later.”

Zoey hums her agreement. “Definitely. But we’ll also keep guard and make sure Celine doesn’t come in, so...don’t worry too much about that,” she promises. Rumi watches as Zoey comes over, quietly settling right next to her, taking one hand into her own. “You know we love you, right?”

“You’re being sappy,” Mira warns. “She has a headache.”

“What better time to be sappy?” Zoey shoots back, casually, as if she hasn’t just said something unfathomable to Rumi. “Seriously. I love you,” Zoey presses, a little firmer. “You’re still Rumi, even with these. You said you’ve had them forever, right?” She asks, and Rumi nods. “Then you’ve always been Rumi with them, even if we didn’t get to see. So...you know. Please don’t totally freak out when we start asking stuff later.”

“I’ll...try,” Rumi promises, softly. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” Mira agrees, which makes Rumi smile. She would laugh if it didn’t send throbbing pain throughout her entire skull. “But it’s fine. Well, it’s not. But it’s going to be, so...it’s mostly fine.”

“Preemptively fine,” Zoey says with a grin.

Mira snorts. “Something like that. So, yeah. You don’t have to totally lose it, or whatever. I’m mad at you, but you’re pretty easy to be mad at. This really isn’t that out of the ordinary for you.”

Rumi grins, letting her head fall back into the pillows, closing her eyes. “Says you.”

“You’re really lucky that you’re, like, dying right now,” Mira shoots back. “Keep it up and I’ll hit you with my woldo on purpose.”

“I could take you right now,” Rumi mutters, waving her hand blindly in the air. 

“No one is doing anything,” Zoey scoffs, sounding almost appalled. “Chill out. It’s just one thing after another with you two. How did you literally survive without me?”

“I was barely holding on,” Mira says. “Rumi’s insufferable. Maybe that’s a demon thing.”

Zoey lets out a huff, sounding almost offended on Rumi’s behalf, which is nice of her. Rumi’s hardly surprised, though, because Zoey has always been really nice like that. Other than this morning, but that had been Shadow Zoey. “Mira, you can’t just—”

“Nevermind. Definitely a Rumi thing,” Mira decides, sounding like she’s grinning. Rumi doesn’t even need to open her eyes to know that she’s totally grinning. 

“Okay, that’s worse to say to her. You see how that’s worse to say, right? Like, do you—I need you to look at me. Look at me. In the eyes. Not—Mira. In my eyes, Mira. On my face. Tell me that you understand that it’s worse to say Rumi is inherently—eyes, Mira—insufferable.”

Rumi laughs this time, dragging her free hand down her face, ignoring the shooting bolts of pain from behind her eyes. It’s worth it.

So, maybe Celine was wrong.

It’s the last thought Rumi has before she finds herself slipping away, tiredness taking over her entire body so suddenly that she doesn’t have a chance to fight back. She falls asleep to Zoey and Mira’s quiet voices, listening to the playful, teasing jabs they shoot back and forth. She tries to perk up a few times when she hears her name, but it’s always lulled over with Zoey’s hand in her own, thumb brushing across her knuckles. 

It’s easier than it should be. 

(When Rumi wakes up, Mira and Zoey stay true to their promises of bombarding her with questions. But it’s easy then, too. It stays easy even when the questions carry on late into the night, even when they ask to see her patterns, even when the questions turn from “are you sure you can’t steal souls?” to “why did you lie to us for a year?”, and it’s...okay. All of it is okay. Rumi keeps her promise of not totally freaking out—she only freaks out a little—and, somehow, they manage.

And they very, very decidedly, do not tell Celine.)