I come bearing baby bean au Zoey angst because I have Zoey Angst Disease ™
1.) When Mira and Rumi first told Zoey they were expecting, Zoey’s immediate assumption was that they were finally going to ask her to move out. After all, there’s three apartments in the penthouse and while Rumi and Mira share what used to be just Rumi’s, Mira does like to have her own space to hang out in or work. So they tell her, and Zoey is overjoyed, she’s so happy for them. And she’s looking for new apartments the next day.
It’s not until about a month later, maybe 8 weeks into the pregnancy, that Mira actually brings up the baby’s nursery room. She and Zoey are eating breakfast together and she very casually brings up that they want to start shopping for furniture soon, better to have it too early than too late. And Zoey swallows her food, wishes she had a little more time, and says “Oh yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ve started looking for a new place so the room will be empty soon,”
Mira is, of course, aghast. The plan was to turn her old bedroom into the nursery, they were never going to ask Zoey to leave. And Zoey is equally confused.
“Mira, it’s okay. You’ve worked so hard for this, to have a family. I’ve known since you and Rumi started trying that I was gonna have to leave to let you make room for that,” And she says it with so much love and kindness and Mira can’t help but think of all the little ways Zoey has pulled out of their lives since she and Rumi started dating. How she would wave off invitations to grab dinner and stay late at the studio writing instead, to let them have some “couple time”. How she had stopped being the first one to initiate casual touch, or casual conversation for that matter. During movie nights she had slowly distanced herself from her previous place tucked on Rumi’s side and now sat a respectful few feet away, and that was when she joined them at all rather than heading off somewhere to let them have a “date night” (they had plenty of date nights, and less and less Huntr/x nights). More and more of Mira’s interactions with Zoey had started to be exclusively in the studio or during hunts. And, feeling helpless, she responds with,
“Please don’t leave,” because what else can she say? Zoey isn’t hindering her family, she IS her family. Mira tugs on the bonds of the Honmoon, waking up Rumi who rushes in half asleep and ready for an emergency. She blinks in surprise and bleariness when all she finds is a confused and resigned Zoey and an absolutely heartbroken Mira.
“What’s going on?” Rumi’s voice is still thick with sleep as she asks. Zoey seems equally confused.
“It’s okay, genuinely. I don’t mind moving out for you guys to make room for a family. You’ve earned this, Mira. Let yourself have it,” Because she thinks maybe that’s the problem. Maybe Mira isn’t letting herself have nice things. And the air goes still and Zoey waits for the sigh of relief from the other two that she isn’t making this difficult for them. Zoey is so good at making it easy for people, she’s so good at moving out of the way. She can do it one last time, she can take it.
Except the stillness isn’t broken with relief but Mira closing the gap between them in the kitchen and clutching onto Zoey desperately. Rumi is sputtering, looking at her like she’s grown an extra head.
“We would never ask you to do that. You’re part of our family,” Rumi says, gently, like she’s not sure how Zoey will take it. And oh. Okay. It’s not like it’s the first time she’s said it, Mira has said it too, and Zoey. But Zoey sort of figured that once they were really a family they wouldn’t want her anymore. She’s a good friend, she knows. She fills in little gaps where she’s needed, she listens and smiles and makes plans when the two of them need someone to push them to act. But they’re married now, they have a kid on the way. There’s no more gaps for Zoey to fill, she’s served her purpose.
There’s a long sit down chat, where Zoey reveals as little about how she’s feeling as she can get away with, and Rumira both try desperately to get her to understand that they will never, ever, not want her around. And Zoey stays, because they ask her to and she will never begrudge her girls what they want. And she tries to be worthy of it.
2.) Zoey and Rumi stop letting Mira go out on hunts when she’s pregnant, obviously. Mira protests, weakly, but one mention of the potential of the baby getting hurt and she backs down. It’s not for her own sake, it’s for Bean, even if sitting around while her girls are out fighting makes her skin crawl.
Except that it doesn’t stop there. Because soon, Zoey is pushing Rumi to stay behind too. At first it’s because Mira is having terrible nausea and dizziness spells early in the pregnancy (demon babies are rough to carry, evidently, even 1/4 demon babies). So when Mira is hunched over a toilet with Rumi rubbing her back and they all feel a rip in the Honmoon, Zoey insists that Rumi stay back while she goes and deals with it. She limps back later, claw marks on her back that really need stitches and that she can’t reach herself, and hears Rumi softly singing to Mira, still in the bathroom. And she can’t interrupt that. So she goes to her bedroom and waits, doing her best to keep pressure on the marks.
Once when she was 10, she managed to cut her finger open while helping her mom prepare dinner. Her parents were fighting the whole while, neither of them even noticed her slip up, and so Zoey sat, silently, kitchen towel wrapped around her hand, and waited for a good moment to interject. It took about an hour, and Zoey had long since gotten dizzy, and dinner was probably not going to happen that night anyways. But finally her mom stomped upstairs and it was just her and her dad in the kitchen, and she weakly showed him the now crimson saturated towel. He panicked, immediately taking her to the nearest urgent care where she was given stitches and antibiotics and where she lied about how long ago the cut had happened so he wouldn’t feel bad.
So Zoey is fine sitting in her room and waiting for the sounds of Mira’s retching to ease. Even as her vision goes dark at the edges and the pain becomes an all consuming throb, she waits. Even as the blood on the towel cools (almost relieving honestly, like her own ice pack to soothe the ache. She would laugh at the idea but she’s so tired). Eventually she hears the sounds of Rumi heating up something in the kitchen, something light but nutritious that Mira will hopefully keep down. And when that’s done and Mira is eating, she finally slips out, tentatively, to the kitchen. Rumi and Mira look so peaceful eating together, she almost hates to ask, but there’s really no way for her to reach the cuts and she needs to clean them and stitch them up.
“Hey uh… sorry to interrupt but I think a demon got me pretty good earlier and I could use some help,” Her voice is weaker and shakier than she thought it would be. How much blood has she lost? She hasn’t looked at herself yet. If the way Rumi and Mira go pale at the sight of her is any indication, it’s bad. Rumi bolt up immediately, rushing to their first aid supplies. Mira, who looks so tired and wrung out that Zoey’s guilt increases tenfold, suddenly looks like she’s going to throw up again. She stands, guiding Zoey over to the couch, and Zoey hasn’t realized she was dizzy until then. Mira’s hands are so warm against her face, and that isn’t right because Mira runs cold, especially after she’s been sick. Is Zoey cold? Maybe. It’s hard to tell.
Rumi comes back and patches her up and makes her promise to never wait to tell her about an injury like this again. Zoey smiles at her and says yes, and silently promises to make it work alone next time. They don’t need to be worrying about her like this.
3.) As said before, Zoey doesn’t stop urging Rumi to stay behind too. Or Mira. Even after Bean is born, Zoey insists on going on hunts alone more often than not. Bean needs both parents. Auntie Zoey is great, she thinks, and she loves Bean, but she’s expendable.
The other two hate it so much, but let her, so long as she promises to let them patch her up. Because Zoey, even when she hates herself for it, is great at manipulating them to stay behind by bringing up Bean. But Rumi has spent so much of her life watching Celine come home from solo hunts covered in wounds. She knows that there’s a reason hunters come in three. She will not let Zoey destroy herself if she can help it. And Mira has spent so long watching the people she loves not be able to accept that love. She won’t let Zoey build up walls (it’s too late, neither of them have realized it’s too late).
Zoey, of course, doesn’t keep her promise. Because she’s a woman of action, of plans, of love through acts of service. And what better service can she give her girls except to keep them and bean safe at the expense of her own body?
WHY MUST WE HURT ZOEY SO........
