Alright you asked for it
Tw for vivid descriptions of death and maybe the barest hint of suicidal ideation? (The death is peaceful, but still)
Mi-yeong has known, since she came back, that she's now going to be the last of the sunlight sisters to die.
Poppy and Celine are both over a hundred by now, and everyone is in town because they know this is the end. Their children, grandchildren, Bobby, and at this point at least a small handful of great grandchildren are in the room around them, telling stories and trying to keep the mood light as everyone says their final goodbyes.
They're laying together, side by side on what everyone knows is their deathbed, with a barely 70 year old Mi-yeong between them. She's running her fingers through their hair, kissing their cheeks and foreheads, and holding their hands when they're not busy holding each other's, all while trying to stay present in the conversation because she knows the lively chatter will help them go easier.
Rumi is sitting on the side of the bed, holding Celine's hand and feeding the grip on her own get weaker as the hours pass, while Mira and Zoey stand behind her and rub her shoulders when she tenses them to fight back tears. Hayun sits on the other side, holding Poppy's hand in one of hers, while tracing the veins and lines and scars of her arm with her fingers. Nayoon is situated near the foot of the bed, keeping a close eye on all three of her parents and occasionally reaching over for a comforting touch to their shoulders or leaning in to kiss their foreheads.
The reminiscing and laughter start to die down as Celine and Poppy get more and more tired. They're struggling to keep their eyes open, but still manage the occasional weak smiles for their wife, daughters and each other. Poppy is the first to fall asleep, her head starting to fall to the side and her breaths getting shallow. Mi-yeong slides an arm under her neck to prop her head up straight,
"I want to make sure she's comfortable," she whispers.
Tears drip down from Hayun's eyes and into Poppy's limp hand, and she coils her body around Poppy with a choked sob while Mi-yeong reaches over to soothingly rub her back with her free arm. Rumi follows suit, laying down next to Celine and gently pushing her face into the crook of her shoulder and draping an arm across her chest to feel the ever-slowing rise and fall. It feels different now, cooler and bony, but comforting all the same. Nayoon falls forward, curling up across their legs and strategically angling her body as to not put pressure on already fragile bones. Mi-yeong moves her hand from rubbing Hayun's back to scratch the back of Nayoon's head.
Bobby quietly ushers the in-laws and grandchildren out of the room, having helped put the great grandkids to bed more than an hour before, so that Celine and Poppy can pass away peacefully with their wife between them and in a pile of their daughters.
Celine leans in, as much as she's able, to kiss the top of Rumi's head, and a strangled wail tears through Mi-yeong's throat. Celine reaches up for her face, allowing Mi-yeong to hold her wrist and guide her through the motion.
"I can't lose you again," she cries, "I don't want us to be apart forever!"
Celine's eyes open and drop closed, before opening again to focus on Mi-yeong's face. She swallows, stroking Mi-yeong's cheek with her thumb and breathing deeper as she gathers the strength to speak. Her voice comes out rough, dry and weak and so quiet they wouldn't have heard her if anyone else were still in the room, but it's still so completely, definitively her. Her words are simple, clipped into a barely-there croak,
"you'll find your way back to us. You always do."
The final moments are quiet. Hayun and Nayoon fall asleep an hour after Celine, curled up around all three of their mothers one last time. Rumi dozes off only a short while later than them, leaving Mi-yeong the one awake. She stays sitting upright, even as her own aging body struggles to maintain the position through the lack of proper sleep, just to watch all of them breathe. All of them-- Rumi's soft snores as she presses her body against Celine's side to keep herself from falling off the bed, the quiet giggles and half-formed names Hayun calls out when she's dreaming, and the steady rhythm of Nayoon curled up in a ball on her lap. They kept her present, reminding her that there is still something to live for once her wives cross over into death, a state entirely new for them and not that familiar to her.
She can't bring herself to sleep, the idea of leaving and them being gone when she comes back too much to bear. She wants to watch it happen. To see who goes first, to see who has to wait, to see who has to be alone like she was all those years ago.
A few hours after midnight, at a time where not even Celine herself would still be awake, it happens. The fingers that had spent hours barely curving around Mi-yeong's hand relax completely, and Celine's chest falls without ever rising again. Rumi pulls the frail, cooling body towards her own and whimpers softly, as if she's aware of what just happened even in her sleep.
Poppy follows close behind-- only an hour after. Still peaceful, but not as quiet as Celine. Her final breath comes in what sounds like the strangled gasp one makes after a coughing fit, except instead of evening out into a steady rhythm, it stops completely. The jerk of Poppy's body as it finally fails startles Hayun, the lightest sleeper of her daughters, and prompts a sharp whine that alludes to an understanding similar to Rumi's.
Mi-yeong pulls her long asleep arm from under Poppy's head, and reluctantly lets Celine's hand drop over her chest. She slides down the bed in an effort to lay down properly and go to sleep. There's no reason for her to stay awake anymore, she's seen all she needs to see, guided them through every step she could. As her eyelids grow heavy, the weight in her chest does too. It feels crushing, a type of pressure that forces the air from her lungs and stops more from coming in.
Sleep draws closer, becoming more inevitable with every passing minute, and all Mi-yeong can do is stare up at the ceiling and wonder: what are they feeling? Where are they going? Do they miss her? Are they still themselves enough to miss her? Will they all go to the same place? Are they together? Were they happy? Are they happy now? Can she be happy? Why doesn't she remember what it was like? Will it feel familiar? When will she go to sleep? Will she ever wake up? Does she want to wake up--
The rustling of the blanket above her shines a light through the cloud of her thoughts. Nayoon, who almost never moves or shifts once she's asleep, is wriggling away from her almost fetal position at their feet to lay on top of Mi-yeong. She holds onto her tightly, creating an entirely new kind of pressure on her chest, this one warm and grounding rather than the suffocating emptiness from before. Hayun feels her sister move, and instinctively reaches across Poppy's body, one arm swinging over to Mi-yeong's far shoulder and the other jammed under her neck in a kind of long distance hug. The movement knocks Celine's hand out of Rumi's, making her eyebrows knit together as she clenches and flexes the hand in search of contact, only settling back into low snores when Mi-yeong reaches over to hold it. She falls asleep like that in the early hours of the morning, a position that would leave onlookers unsure of who is comforting who.
Hayun wakes up with the sun a few hours later, waiting for her sisters to stir before leading them out of the room once they decide to let their moms sleep together a final time. Mi-yeong stays asleep and undisturbed until almost noon, and even when she wakes up between the bodies of her wives, she knows there is still more to live for.
And she does live, another twenty-four years in fact, passing away in a similarly peaceful manner once she's well into her 90s.
"Do you think they're together again?" Hayun asks as they lower Mi-yeong into the ground.
"of course," Nayoon replies, tears rolling down her face.
"She'll find her way back to them," Rumi smiles from her place under the tree, "she always does."
Oh. Oh yeah no. I’m.. I’m great.
(…you’ve inspired me…dual Mimi Alone AU, perhaps? 😈)