❛ what you did to me. was it worth it? did you get everything that you wanted? ❜ (cue Rumi her talking to her sword)
quote lost to the ask tag <3
RUMI IS TALKING AGAIN. IT ISN'T THE FIRST TIME. it won't be the last. it has been four months since the recreation of the honmoon. it has been four months since jinu sealed his soul within rumi's. he has hardly been aware of it. consciousness gets easier to cling to, as time goes on, but jinu has little to measure the passage of time, compared to the centuries he's walked, and it will take a lot more than that to bring him back from death.
it is hard to describe the feeling. not quite pain, but certainly not the absence of it. his spine aches, constantly, infinitely, a cerebral throbbing like a wound with too much pressure applied. had he any flesh, it would certainly burn, but instead, there is only the dull, gnawing absence of the self. right now, he is depleted. empty. a soul stripped to its barest, a fire died down to coals. he drips around himself, fluid, malleable, reduced to something fragile, sheltered away between third and fourth rib.
not quite death, but not life. still, more freedom than he had ever had in his mortal time. more freedom than he had ever had, in four hundred and twenty - odd years. jinu cannot do much of anything, anymore, but at least he cannot score open old wounds.
did he get what he wanted..? huh. that's hardly a fair question. jinu doesn't even know what he'd wanted, when he did it. it was not something he planned to do. he did not plan to throw himself between blade & blaze. he did not plan to die. he certainly did not plan to stay trapped, here, in this state.
he does not see through eyes of his own, nowadays, but rather the reflection of light upon the edge of a blade, or the pounding of a hunter's heart. he does not feel through his own flesh, anymore, but rather, the way rumi's soul sings, breaching every inch of time and space between them. taste is a sense gone abandoned. smell… almost reaches him, in some distant, animal way. touch comes distant, muted, a hand upon a hilt that does not fully feel like him.
no, he did not plan this. what jinu wanted feels… so far away, now. his movement, his lunge, his abandoning of the plan, it had all been calculated on the split-second drop of his heart. jinu's heart had not beat since gwi - ma claimed his soul.
rumi had brought his pulse back, and jinu did not realize it until the sight of her crumbling nearly broke him in two.
living this way, through rumi, has redefined him, he thinks. the love she feels for everything seeps in at all the edges of him. her threads tangle up around his, pulling, weaving, knotting a bracelet out of subconscious spirit. he isn't unhappy with this state of being, but it's arguably far from what he wanted. a home, a safe place to curl up – but it is empty. it is off - balance. it is missing a pack of animals four heads strong, wild & ungodly, uncontrollable & infuriating.
it is missing what he cannot bring back. jinu will not have the strength for words for many more months. a year, maybe. it does not mean he isn't here. it does not mean he isn't aware. he will come back, eventually. he can feel it in the way his strength pools, minutely, with every song. jinu will come back. from that point on, rumi can air out all her grievances against him. she can choose to keep him, or cast him aside.
others won't be so lucky.
… what he did. was it worth it? was it?
rumi sits in her anger & her grief. jinu sits with her. within her. around her. if he could, he would lift his hand from the blade, and cup her cheek. if he could, he would run his thumb beneath her eyelid, & murmur, almost. almost.
but life is not about getting what you want. so, tonight, rumi speaks to her sword. tonight, her sword cannot reply. hunter & demon will sit, alone together, in their sorrow. was it worth it? did he get what he wanted? did he do the right thing?
almost, the sword nearly hums. almost.