seaskylark @seaskyylark - Tumblr Blog

The original concept for mirror mirror btw (when I first started rambling about it to bug in the dms) wasn’t “normal Celine swaps with Evil Awful Monster Celine” in the way it exists now but rather “normal Celine swaps with Celine who does not embrace Rumi’s personhood to some degree”

Bc like. There are fics where Rumi is raised to see herself as less than human and more of a weapon, or perhaps something to be sacrificed, that otherwise tend very close to canon (or might reflect the author’s reading of canon)

And I think it would be a really interesting celineverse concept to have Celine swap into the universe where she’s subtly emotionally abusive rather than just getting the Face Full Of Horrors universe, tbh

zoloteh-volossya

Ough!!! God, that might honestly be even worse? Because for all the horrors of the OG mirror mirror universe, at least it is immediately very clear that this version of Celine has made some very different choices. But this version of the mirror mirror universe she doesn't have that immediate differentiator, and coming out of the Tree Scene Celine might just assume that this is just her looking at how she treated pre-debut Rumi with new eyes (and absolute overwhelming self hatred).

Meanwhile, it would probably take a while for Huntrix to even realize the nature of the switch. Maybe only when Rumi tries to discuss the Tree Incident?

secondtolastrow

Yeah like main!Celine is just like “wow Rumi was so depressed and closed off when she was living with me—how didn’t I see what I was doing to her?”

And main!Huntrix start off thinking “wow younger Celine is kind of in a not-great mood. We should be kinda gentle with her, this must be a really stressful situation”

Except it’s targeted. At Rumi. She needs to talk to Rumi alone. She needs to find out what’s happened to the Honmoon, what’s happened with their music, yes it’s… good… that they have such a strong relationship and haven’t hurt her but what is she doing with her patterns visible?

And Rumi knows she should be nice, Celine’s just freaking out, she’s always been a control freak, she just wants to make sure Rumi is okay, but—fuck, after everything? For this to be their first real talk?

She’s snapping right back at Celine

Who is entirely astounded for all of a second (given that her Rumi has long since taken to just shutting down and trying to fix herself later) before she kicks her anger into high gear

fakelawyerbug

Oooh yes.

And like, Rumi and Celine have definitely argued before (Rumi did used to be a teenager and Mira can attest to the screaming matches Rumi used to get into with Celine. Never very often but on occasions, it did happen.)

"How dare you speak to me like this" is expected.

Being called a demon to her face is not. And Rumi is flinching back like she'd been slapped. (She thinks she would have preferred to be slapped instead of seeing the look on Celine's face.)

secondtolastrow

It’s nauseous, sickening. The vicious pleasure on Celine’s face. The way she steps forward. “You will get control of yourself. Before your… nature dooms us all.”

It’s every one of Rumi’s worst nightmares, spoken out loud.

And it doesn’t make sense, because Celine looked at Rumi in her knees, begging her to prevent that nature from dooming them all, and she dropped to her knees to pick her back up.

fakelawyerbug

"I -- I'm sorry?" Rumi sputters, Celine's words startling her out of something more coherent like, Celine what the fuck is wrong with you or Oh, are you regretting not lopping off my head when you had the chance? I will reenact Idol Awards night right here, don't think I won't.

(Mira might not have been wrong when she called Rumi, "a little dramatic" when they were kids.)

Having been raised by Celine her entire life, Rumi knows what Celine is going to do next;

Celine is going to make some excuse about how she, "must be more stressed than she thought" which would be as close to, "I'm sorry, I was wrong" as she would get.

And then Celine would leave in as dignified a manner as she could while Rumi bristles in irritation behind her.

And the next time Celine came over, she would come with so many tupperware containers filled with all of Rumi's favorite dishes that Rumi would be unable to resist opening the door.

Celine would fill their empty-but-for-takeout refrigerator with her cooking and Rumi would look on with fond annoyance that would (mostly) melt away when Celine slings an arm around her and pulls her close to kiss her on the forehead.

That's how this is supposed to go.

Which leaves Rumi flatfooted and off guard when, instead of what Celine is supposed to do, Celine instead crosses her arms and nods as though Rumi had actually apologized.

"Good," Celine says. "And be a good girl and cover those up. You might not have control over what you are but at least have the courtesy of not waving it in everyone's face."

secondtolastrow

Rumi sputters, and Celine’s eyes narrow, and—what the actual fuck?

But she is trying so, so hard not to say that thing that she knows will hurt Celine (Are you regretting not lopping my head off when you had the chance?), because she knows that impulse just means she’s scared, so she throws her hands up and walks out, instead.

And Celine was the one who taught her to walk away—maybe not with that kind of huff, but she’d insistently chipped away at Rumi’s childish temper tantrums, who else would’ve?

And yet, somehow, Celine is the one following her down the hall with a sharp “Excuse you? I wasn’t done speaking.”

///

@zoloteh-volossya Not interrupting!

I feel like it would be creepy, to some degree, but it also wouldn’t be clearly established—it would be everything Rumi has wanted to hear from Celine, has hoped was true about Celine, has imagined was there between them because maybe, maybe if she were good enough then Celine would want her. And love her

Old Celine looks at her with those sad eyes and she tries to say, “I love you,” again, and Rumi thinks

Maybe she died. Like she was supposed to. Maybe she died like a good Hunter would, and that’s why Celine is looking at her this way.

It would be nice, she thinks, to die for Mira and Zoey.

That, or old Celine is definitely a demon

fakelawyerbug

"Well, I'm done listening!" Rumi yells, her steps faltering for only a moment before she regained her nerve and stride turned forceful once more.

She didn't have a location in mind as she turns a corner. Celine's steps behind her -- were they getting louder? -- driving her forward, through the halls and corners of her own home.

Why was Celine doing this? Why wasn't she just letting Rumi leave?

A hand grips her shoulder and spins Rumi around. She comes face to face with an extremely irritated Celine, a deep scowl on her face.

"How dare you walk away from me?" Celine says. "After everything you've been given? I didn't have to take you in, you know. And you can't even respect me enough to stay and listen?"

Oooh yeah.

This Rumi who has been told so many times to her face that she's a mistake (Miyeong's mistake, something that shouldn't have been able to exist and yet here she is) and that she has demon blood tainting her.

And sure, Celine isn't the warmest person around. And she's made it clear that if she weren't Miyeong's daughter, she wouldn't have taken Rumi in at all but --

There had to be some love there, Rumi thinks. Surely some part of Celine loves Rumi.

But Rumi had also long given up hope of hearing it from Celine.

So when Celine brushes Rumi's forehead with the palm of her hand and says, "You know I love you, right? You're the most precious person to me in this whole world."

What else can she do except pretend she's not crying and ask, "Did I die?"

secondtolastrow

“If you regret it that much, you might as well go,” Rumi spits back, before she even lets herself process the cut. “I’d offer to leave, but this isn’t the home you took me into.”

Celine breathes sharply through her nose, a chilly look that Rumi has rarely seen—and never experienced for herself—settling over her features. “Clearly not. My Rumi has not been allowed to lapse into such… degeneracy.”

Funny, how long Rumi has wanted to Celine to call her that—my Rumi, my family, my daughter—and now that she hears it, it sits like a cold, ugly lump in her stomach. My Rumi the way one might say my dog or my sword.

“Degeneracy?”

Both of them snap towards the sound of Mira’s voice, staring. It’s like suddenly the world exists again, something more than just Rumi and Celine and this awful wrongness.

Except not, because the look on Mira’s face is—Rumi’s gone and brought this to her, too.

A little more shaken than she’d ever mean to be, Mira says, “You sound like my dad.”

///

“No,” Celine says, promises, her voice shaking. “No, Rumi-yah, no, you lived, you get to live, I promise you, you get to live as your whole self.”

Rumi judders back from her touch, from those gentle hands, catching on that last phrase. She’s a good Hunter. She is. She knows how to keep her guard up. “My whole self?”

But Celine only repeats, insistent, “You get to live.”

Then she steps towards Rumi, the look in her eyes fierce and uncompromising and utterly terrified, and Rumi can see the animal in it, the less than human thing, and she is a good Hunter.

She doesn’t hesitate to take another step back and summon her blade between them.

fakelawyerbug

"And I'm sorry your father ever thought that was an appropriate thing to say to his child, Mira," Celine says.

When Celine speaks to Mira, she almost sounds like herself. Patient, kind, if a little exasperated. Hearing it tears at Rumi's insides.

Why Mira and not me, Rumi wants to say.

"Then why say that to Rumi?" Mira demands. Her hands shake in the way they do when she nervous and upset and is trying to hide it. "You've always said we needed to be better -- just because we came from ... people like him didn't mean we had to be that way too. We could be better."

Celine sighs. Almost fondly.

"Mira, Rumi is different," she says. There was a tic in her eyelid as she said this; a small twitching in her lips that was the start of a frown.

"You told me I was a hunter, just like my mother." Rumi couldn't hide the hurt in her voice.

"You are and I'm proud of what you've grown up to be." When Celine turns to face her, she's smiling. "But your mother's mistake... makes you less human, Rumi. You know that. It's not fair but you are a... bigger risk than a normal child like Mira was."

For the second time this year, Celine finds herself staring at the glow of Rumi's sword. Only now, the tip is being pointed at her chest.

"You can't fool me," Rumi hisses. "Demon. What did you do to Celine!?"

Celine scrambles back.

"Rumi -- Rumi, it is me," Celine says, her hands held out in front of her. "Rumi, I'm -- I'm sorry I wasn't a good mother to you, but I can change that. And you don't have to love me back or even like me but please, just put away your sword?"

secondtolastrow

Rumi knows—she knows—that Celine is wrong. That she has never been less human, less of a person, because of her father or her patterns. That she has only ever been as much of a demon as she made herself.

But the bottom of her stomach drops out nonetheless.

“Are you proud of me?” she asks, because she has always been too sharp, too ready to cut. “Or have I degenerated according to my nature?”

Celine’s expression tightens, and she almost looks like she’s going to snap back—but she doesn’t.

“How could you ask that?” she says, instead. “Of course I am proud of you.”

///

Something crashes down the hall, and Mira and Zoey exchange a wary look.

Well, Mira gives Zoey a wary look. And Zoey looks like she’s trying firmly to pretend that she didn’t hear anything.

Celine and Rumi are as close as Mira has ever seen to healthy, she thinks, sometimes, and then others… And old Celine is weird. Like, even weirder than Celine usually is.

“Do you think we should go check on them?” Mira asks.

Zoey jumps, and spins her wheels a bit—“What? No, why would we—I’m sure it’s nothing!”—before, as usual, giving in: “…Well, if you think we should, then I guess it can’t hurt?”

Of everything that could be waiting for them down the hall, Mira is not expecting to find Rumi, sword drawn, advancing on old Celine.

Rumi glances at them, and for a moment, she looks utterly deer in the headlights. And then she again and says, nodding to Celine, “She’s a demon imposter.”

fakelawyerbug

It should make her feel better, hearing that.

When she was younger, before she had met Mira and Zoey, and Celine -- and her mother, buried under a gravestone, that she would never meet -- was the single, most important person in her life, Rumi had dreamed of Celine saying that she was proud of her.

In her imagination, she had done something big and important; she'd sealed the honmoon gold.

And Celine would hold her close and whisper those words in her hair because Celine's love was never loud, not even in her imagination. But it was warm and it filled Rumi completely the rare moments it was directed at her.

And, in her imagination, now that she was free to be Rumi and Celine was free to just be Celine -- now that they didn't have to be mentor and student -- they could be... as close to a mother and daughter as they could be.

Her dreams had changed, of course. After she had met Mira and Zoey.

But this was the oldest. Her most closely held dream.

Rumi felt something inside her crumple. Some cornerstone of her very being giving way under the weight of the idea that Celine might not ever want her. That Celine hadn't even seen her as human.

"Because you always told me that I was a hunter, just like my mother," Rumi says. "That I was just as human as she was. That my father didn't -- that it didn't matter that he was a demon, it didn't change who I was."

She snorts to herself. It's a wet and ugly sound.

"You've been lying to me my entire life, you never loved me," Rumi says. "And now you're supposed to be proud of me?"

Mira blinks.

"Uh, Rumi, how do you know that?" She asks, slowly drawing her blade from the honmoon.

From the corner of her eye, she sees flashes of light as Zoey does the same.

Muscles in Celine's arm and shoulders twitch. She shifts her weight, tilts her body in response.

She does not look at them.

Don't get distracted by noise, Celine had taught them.

Mira's pole-arm was too long to be effective in the cramped spaces of a home and Zoey couldn't throw her knives without the risk of sending them into Rumi. They knew that. And Celine knew that.

"She --!" Rumi sputters. Her grip wavers before her knuckles tighten around the hilt of her sword again. "She said I get to live!"

The weight of Mira's gok-do disappears before she grips her hand tighter around the air and it settles inside her palms again. Her shoulder slump and she tilts her head.

"And that's...a bad thing?" Zoey asks. She's scratching her head with the base of a knife. The other hangs in her hand, attached to an arm dangling at her side. "Rumi are -- you know you can talk to us, right?"

"We won't judge what you're feeling," Mira adds. "I mean -- I don't know exactly how you feel but it sounds like maybe how I felt back home? Like it would be easier to just... not be here?"

secondtolastrow

Celine sounds almost offended when she answers, “I have never lied to you about what you are.”

And Rumi stares at her, even though tears are starting to blur her vision, and Celine stares back, and—

It’s so like Celine. The way Celine should be. After the Idol Awards, as they talked about everything, Mira had awkwardly asked some question that Rumi couldn’t even remember now, just the way she’d jumped on it: Celine would never lie to me! She hates lying. I just… made her…

Then Celine purses her lips and huffs through her nose and says, “Don’t start crying, Rumi. It doesn’t get you your way in my time, and you should know better than to think it will now.”

Like Rumi is doing this as some kind of personal attack on her. Like Rumi never should’ve expected anything more than what she got. Like ripping a hole in everything Rumi was—

“Hey, Rumi, c’mere,” Mira says, and suddenly she’s gently tugging Rumi close to her (wrong, wrong, Rumi is her unnie, she’s supposed to be taking care of Mira) and shooting a look at Celine. “I think you guys just need a minute, come on, let’s go find Zoey, yeah?”

And somehow all of the thoughts in Rumi’s head just come out as “Sorry,” muttered quiet and angry-sounding into Mira’s shoulder.

///

“Yes, it’s a bad thing!” Rumi looks an inch away from stomping her foot, which is just adds to the awful, surreal experience that coming into this room has been. She clenches her jaw, glaring at Celine. “I’m not suicidal; I’m just—I’m not—”

Celine (who, Zoey’s gonna be real, she kind of doubts is a demon) looks like she’s going to be sick.

“…Right,” Mira says, managing to stick surprisingly close to her promise of being nonjudgmental. “So why is you living… bad?”

“Celine would never say that,” Rumi snaps. “Not all of me!”

Celine flinches like she’s been slapped, and Zoey isn’t sure what, but she can tell that Rumi just said something important. Something true. Except it doesn’t make sense, because—

Celine is always telling them about the importance of having hope. How else can you inspire it in others?

So why would she tell Rumi any different?

fakelawyerbug

They leave Celine standing in the hall, arms folded, shaking her head.

Turning a corner, slipping out from under Celine's gaze, Rumi sags against Mira. She presses her face into Mira's shoulder and sucks in large, heaving breaths like she had been fished from a river.

Mira rubs circles on Rumi's back.

She doesn't say, "It's going to be okay" or "You're going to be fine" or some other platitude that sounds comforting in her head but she knows doesn't really help -- it didn't help when she still thought her parents actually cared about her and it wouldn't help Rumi now.

What she says is, "You know, I really didn't think the stick up her ass could get bigger."

Rumi snorts into her shoulder.

She feels Rumi shuddering and then, dampess on her shoulder.

"I thought she cared," Rumi says, brokenly, through angry gasps. "She said she loved me!"

"I know," Mira says. "I know."

"And *she* was the one who kept telling me my father didn't matter! It was all about my mother! Miyeong, Miyeong, Miyeong!"

Angrily, Rumi wipes at her eyes. It doesn't stop new tears from welling up and spilling over the sides of her eyelids.

"If she's always felt that way, then she should have told me as a kid!" Rumi scrapes the bottom of her shoe against the floor. "And I wouldn’t have spent my entire life trying to be her daughter!"

"Rumi, I --" Celine's throat bobs like she's trying to force back her own sick. And then, in a pained tone that Zoey had never heard from Celine, she says, "Rumi, something ... happened. You -- you came to me, asking to die and --"

At this, Rumi looks away before catching herself and snapping her gaze back onto Celine.

"-- and I've had to do a lot of reflecting. And I know how I've raised you is wrong, Rumi. I should have showed you how much I loved you. You never should have needed to wonder if I -- if I thought of you as my daughter."

Rumi breathes deep through her nose. Her eyes are rimmed red. But when she speaks, it's with a coldness that makes Zoey want to shiver.

"You can drop the act, demon," Rumi says. "I know Celine would never claim me as her child. I'm my mother's half-demon mistake and that's all I'll ever be to her."

Mira and Zoey stare at her.

secondtolastrow

Mira sends Zoey an SOS and a quick summary of the situation—however hard they were working on getting Celine back to her time before, they need to be doubling that now, because Mira wants that lady the fuck out of her house as fast as possible.

Rumi, reading from where she’s flopped on Mira’s shoulder, makes a quiet sound, somewhere between angry and guilty.

“Come on,” Mira says, careful to keep her tone light. “She was being a dick.”

(She does not touch on the fact that if this is the shit baby Celine believes, then it’s probably what their Celine believes, and she probably wants that lady out of her house too.)

Rumi huffs snottily as the texts back from Zoey (beginning with several shocked and angry emojis) start to flood back at them. “Yeah. Yeah, she really—I mean, you didn’t even hear the part where she started telling me I had to put on some concealer, like my patterns being visible would bring on the apocalypse or something.”

Mira rolls her eyes, dutifully, even as she looks back down at those open mouthed emojis and wishes…

Wishes that they weren’t surprised. That it could be easier. That Celine would’ve just sucked instead of being the person who got her out of hell and made her think maybe she was worth something for all these years.

It’s really, really hard not to think everything I touch always goes to shit eventually right then.

///

Shaking, foolish, back in the night at the tree again, knowing she’ll fail, Celine does what she always has: she tries anyway.

“You are not a mistake,” she says, and she steps forward.

Rumi holds her sword between them with shaking hands, more like she’s warding Celine away than preparing to attack.

It doesn’t matter which, though. Celine still steps forward again, lets it hum with soul-warmth against her shirt. “I am so, so sorry that I made you think differently. I—“

“Stop saying that!” Rumi snarls, and she shifts, and—

—to Celine’s surprise, Zoey catches her wrist.

To everyone else’s, too, from the looks of them. Zoey included.

Rumi skitters back, spreading her hands, lowering her sword, eyes wide, and Celine knows that Mira and Zoey will love Rumi, just as she is, but—maybe they don’t. Not yet. She’s in between them before they can blink, Rumi at her back.

“Don’t hurt her, she’s not—she’s not a demon, she’s not going to hurt anyone, please, it’s Rumi—“

“I think we should all just calm down!” Zoey shouts.

fakelawyerbug

"Is Rumi still throwing her tantrum?" Celine asks the next morning.

She's sitting at the kitchen counter, cup of coffee steaming on a coaster, a legal pad filled with notes written in her neat, cramped handwriting.

It almost could have been a scene from years ago, after they'd debuted but Zoey was still underage and her parent's had thrown a fit at the idea of Zoey living in Seoul alone with two other teenage girls. Never mind building security and Bobby and her work schedule -- "Yes, mother, interviews are part of my job schedule. We don't do them for fun." -- meant that she would barely have time to breath let alone get herself into trouble.

They'd demanded an adultier adult and Celine had moved with them that first year -- much to the dismay of Rumi and Mira.

Celine-then had never sounded like this.

Stern, yes. Exasperated, often. Even annoyed when their energy got too much for Celine to handle and she had joked that, this is why birds shove their babies out of the nest.

But she'd never sounded so... dismissive.

She and Mira had spent the night comforting and distracting Rumi. Who had spent the night alternating between crying over what Celine had said and seething over what Celine had said. She'd finally fallen asleep in time for the first gray light of morning to stream through the windows.

"She's pretty upset, yeah," Zoey says. "You were pretty mean to her yesterday, Celine."

Celine purses her lips and frowns.

"Nothing I said to her should have been a surprise," she says, tapping her fingers against her coffee cup.

"Well... it was." Zoey wants to shake Celine. Wants to tell her that of course Rumi never thought Celine saw her as not-a-person, who would think that when Celine hid this part of her from all of them?

What Zoey says is, "She can't read your mind you know."

At this, Celine's frown deepens.

"I don't know what that girl is playing at," Celine says. "I've made it very clear to her, since she was a child, that she needed to be vigilant of the influence her father's blood would have on her."

Rumi could hardly hear Zoey over the sound of her own blood thruming in her ears.

"Can you stop lying!?" Rumi voice cracks. "I know you think I'm a demon! And you can't love me because of that!"

Celine snaps her head back to look at Rumi. She looks at her with wide, hurt eyes that makes Rumi's lips curl up into a snarl.

How dare Celine look like that? As if Rumi wasn't just repeating everything that Celine thought about her. As if Celine hadn't been telling her since the day she was born that she was her mother's mistake?

"Rumi --" Celine says.

"Just stop!" She screams and the honmoon screams bright red with her.

secondtolastrow

Zoey’s never been the best at telling when people were lying, but… she’s pretty sure Celine is telling the truth. Which is what’s so weird.

Because after they found out Rumi had been lying to them the entire time they’d known her (it was fine) (Zoey got it, it was fine, didn’t trigger any weird issues from people who liked to talk behind her back or parents who made incomprehensible choices or anything) (…ugh, they needed to stop homebrewing therapy before she really got in touch those suckers), they’d talked about it. A lot.

And Rumi had made some things pretty clear about what Celine did that messed her up, even if she always insisted it was her own neuroses.

“Do you think Rumi could ever achieve the Golden Honmoon?” Zoey asks, skipping forward and sideways about five suspicious steps.

Celine tilts her head, nose wrinkling. “What?”

///

Celine freezes, staring at her, breathing shallow, fear painted all across her features: finally, she can’t lie anymore.

Rumi’s chest heaves with the force of her awful victory—what a wretched thing she is.

“Shit,” says Mira. “Same.”

Rumi jolts, staring at her.

“I mean, like, not with Celine, but…” She shrugs. “I get that.”

Rumi’s sword tumbles from her numb fingers, dissolving before it can hit the ground as she stares in shock.

“I wasn’t—trying to hurt you,” Zoey says. “I just—I didn’t want you to hurt anyone else? I think we’re all kinda freaked out and I don’t—I’m definitely not thinking clearly.”

She laughs nervously.

Rumi twitches to reassure her, because Zoey likes touch, likes hugs and hands on shoulders and everything Rumi fumbles with, inexperienced, but. She stops. Because Zoey would know what was touching her.

“I would’ve understood if you did,” she says instead.

Which is probably not the right thing to say, judging from the reactions.

fakelawyerbug

"The Golden Honmoon," Zoey repeats herself. "Do you think she could ever get us there?"

There's a look on Celine's face that Zoey can't quite place. The corners of her eyes soften. Her thumb slowly rubs the rim of her mug. She takes a slow sip of her coffee before setting the mug down with a quiet clink.

"No," Celine says. "I don't."

Zoey frowns.

Celine sighs. "I assume she informed you and Mira that I had once told her that it was her duty to create the golden honmoon despite her heritage?"

Now, Zoey knew that her memory wasn't the best -- her brain sometimes just decides that a conversation wasn't interesting enough to pay attention to -- but she's pretty sure that wasn't at all what Rumi had described when she was trying to explain her childhood to her and Mira now the whole patterns thing was out in the open.

"Celine always told me that the golden honmoon would take my patterns away," Rumi had said. "That once it was created, it would seal away anything demonic."

Zoey frowned. "But aren't you a demon?"

Rumi nodded and then shook her head and then shrugged.

"I -- don't know?" She said. "Celine always said I was just human. A hunter, like my mom. And I guess I never really questioned that."

Their voices overlap -- Celine and Mira and Zoey -- all in some variation of, "Oh, Rumi --"

And the sympathy and pity hurts like a bruised bone, deep and dull and aching, and can't stand to see the looks on their faces -- Mira and Zoey who look scared for her; Celine who looks devestated, like she actually cares, like she loves her -- and so she squeezes her eyes shut and backs away.

The rounded, wooden edge of her windowsill digs into her back and for a brief moment, Rumi contemplates the merits of trying to flee through it.

Then, she slides herself down the wall until she's sitting on the floor.

"We're hunters," Rumi says into her knees. "We're supposed to kill demons, remember?"

secondtolastrow

Zoey skids into Rumi’s bedroom like a woman on a mission, gesturing frantically at Mira to come over to her so they don’t have to whisper-shout over Rumi’s head.

Mira is… intrigued, she’ll admit, but also sleep deprived as fuck, so it does take her a minute to detangle herself.

“I think we misdiagnosed the problem,” Zoey tells her, hushed. “I don’t know if we should wake Rumi up right now or let her sleep but—I just need you to hear me out, okay? And not act like this is some crazy thing I’m saying just to cope.”

Mira raises her eyebrows. When does she ever not hear Zoey out? (Even when it’s about a crush on a non-human character from a children’s cartoon.)

“I’ve seen enough TV shows where this happens to need to be sure,” she hisses, entirely serious.

“I’ll listen,” Mira promises.

Zoey bites her lip, and swallows, and says, “I don’t think Celine is our Celine.”

“…We should wake Rumi up.”

///

Everything Celine says is wrong. She wants to promise Rumi that she is not a demon, that she is good, that she is loved.

But every time she opens her mouth, Rumi screams and Celine is back in the dirt and—

So she bites her tongue.

“Yeah, but you’re not—demons eat people!” Zoey says, hands flailing. “You carry extra candy in case my blood sugar gets low!”

“…You really think we wouldn’t hear you out?” Mira asks, a beat later, heartbreak soft in her voice.

(Celine decides that she will not be telling them about what would have otherwise happened. They don’t need to know these things. They’re good girls, that shouldn’t haunt them.)

fakelawyerbug

Just about the first thing Mira learned about Rumi when she first moved in with her and Celine was that Rumi hated being woken up.

Yes, the girl woke up almost as early as Celine -- which is to say, before the sky got light enough to be properly called morning -- but getting woken up? In Mira's experience, it usually results in a hand to the face pushing the offending voice away and a threat, delivered into a pillow, of retribution.

Today, Rumi blinks awake and curls tighter around the piece of her comforter she was clutching to her chest.

"Hey," Mira says quietly. Her hand rests on Rumi's shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

A shadow of a smile crosses Rumi's face before a loud sniffle made her turn her head to hide her expression in her covers.

"I keep hoping yesterday was just a nightmare," Rumi says, her voice muffled. "I just -- I don't understand why she would take care of me for so long if she felt like that. Do you remember that time I got a spring fever and she was on a plane the next morning with her homemade samgaetang?"

It had been the South American leg of their first All Americas Tour. Mira remembers that Rumi hadn't even been all that sick, just a mild headache and temperature that had been treated with a fever reducer. But Rumi had mentioned it to Celine on their nightly check-in and Celine had been knocking on their hotel room door by morning.

Mira also remembers how an acrid jealousy had gripped her throat so fiercely that all she could do was nod when Celine had reached out with a hand to smooth over Mira's hair and ask if she was doing okay. After she had finished babying Rumi, of course.

"Well, Zoey had a thought that might make that true," Mira says.

And as Zoey retells her conversation with Celine, Rumi perks up. Hope flooding her body that by the time Zoey had finished talking, she was upright and pacing.

"No, no, this all makes so much more sense now," Rumi says, feverishly. "All that BS about my father? My Celine barely wanted to acknowledge he existed!"

Mira feels her own hope -- warm, fluttering, fragile as morning dew -- rise inside of herself. She grips that feeling and squeezes until it was snuffed out.

She couldn't -- she had given her own parents so many chances. And getting proven wrong had hurt more every time.

She wanted to believe that this was a mistake. That the Celine here was some... weird version of Celine like in those video games that Zoey liked to play instead of the Celine that had raised them but...

The disappointed of being wrong would crush her. Mira knew that.

Celine knew when she wasn't wanted or needed. And seeing these three girls -- all three of them she considered her children in the places of her she doesn't show anyone else, sometimes not even to herself -- talk and cry and bring Rumi comfort when all she could do was hurt Rumi, she knew she wasn't needed.

Slipping out of Rumi's room, Celine found herself wandering her way into to her kitchen.

There was an oddness to this house like nothing was quite where it was supposed to be in her memories of what this house looked like when Rumi was this age.

That photo of her and her girls, taken when they had been young and bright and hadn't known what was to become of them -- hadn't she taken that down when Rumi confided in her that looking at it made her sad? That must have been later, she decides, staring into Miyeong's eyes, forever frozen by camera flash.

"I wish you were here, Miyeong-ah," Celine says. "You'd -- you would have known how not to raise Rumi. She would have been so much happier if you were here instead of me."

secondtolastrow

“I mean,” Zoey points out, very carefully, cringing as she does, “there’s still… a Rumi… who has this Celine…”

“Even assuming Zoey’s right,” Mira adds. “Not—I just don’t want to get our hopes up before we’re certain.”

Rumi breathes in around the ache of their words, the popped-balloon feeling of them, and tries to steady herself.

(Some other version of her. Someone who didn’t have the things Rumi had, because Celine gave them to her.

I didn’t have to take you in, you know.

Be a good girl and cover those up.

Your mother’s mistake makes you less human, Rumi.

That thought, Rumi decides, makes her want to break Fake Celine’s face.)

(That Fake Celine might not be…)

“So how do we make sure?” Rumi asks. “There has to be a way to check, right?”

///

Rumi shows Mira and Zoey the patterns carefully. She hates herself for the hesitation. They deserve to see what they’re working with, after all.

(They’ve promised they aren’t going to hurt her, after all, even if she deserves it.)

“Wow,” Zoey says, softly, eyes wide. “I thought you just had a sensory thing or something.”

Rumi feels vaguely ill under their gazes. Like a zoo animal. A creeping feeling prickles across the back of her neck, hot and ugly.

“I…” Mira hesitates, and doesn’t finish the thought, instead refocusing to look Rumi in the eyes. “Thank you for trusting us.”

“O—yeah!” Zoey bounces up, tackling Rumi into a hug, just the way she always has. “We love you, Rumi. Wait, did I—“

She pulls back, and Rumi wants to die (probably shouldn’t be using that phrase anything soon) hates it. Impulsively, stupidly, she grabs at the closest part of Zoey and pulls her back.

“Oh! Yay, Rumi hugs are still okay,” Zoey cheers, reaching back for Mira.

So it’s still okay.

They stay like that for a while, talking softly while all on top of each other. Rumi understands why Zoey and Mira always seem to be doing this now.

Eventually, though, there’s a knock on the door.

Rumi quickly gets up to open it for Celine, almost trying to straighten out Mira and Zoey the way she really should the rest of her room before—remembering.

Celine is standing there at the door. She’s got a picture frame in her hands. That one of the Sunlight Sisters from in the kitchen.

Rumi’s stomach sinks at the idea that Celine might give it to her.

But instead she just says, “I made food. It’s in the kitchen.”

Soft, and sad, and… caring.

And then she walks away.