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As the elevator slowly sunk down to the gymnasium floor, Rumi heard exactly what she was hoping not to hear: the sounds of a punching bag being hit rapidly and repeatedly. It wasn't exactly a surprise to hear that (though it would be for most people, given that it was currently five in the morning), but Rumi had still had some hope that that might not be the case. Maybe that was foolish of her.
It had only been a day or two since the worst day of their lives, after all.
When the elevator dinged and opened, Rumi immediately saw Mira going at the heavy bag, not interrupting her flow even slightly. Even so, she knew that despite the earbuds she had in, she was very aware of her presence. The new Honmoon was theirs and theirs specifically, so it was even more attuned to them than the old one had been. And that let Rumi feel, to some small extent, the visceral waves of anger barely contained in every hit to the heavy bag.
"GRRAAH!" With a cry, Mira slammed her fist into the bag one last time, and the leather covering split, sand spilling out onto Mira's feet. "GOD DAMMIT!" She scrambled back, and Rumi couldn't tell whether she'd broken the bag intentionally or not. Either way, she huffed a few times, wiped sweat off her forehead with her equally sweaty arm, and then turned to face Rumi, taking her earbuds out. "...morning."
"Good morning," Rumi said, her voice sounding possibly more stilted and awkward than it ever had. "Did you sleep we—um..." the bags under Mira's eyes already answered that question, so she went with a different one. "Did you sleep?"
"Nnnnnnnope." Rather than the boxing gloves she should have been wearing, Mira started unwrapping the bandages from around her hands, and on the lower layers, Rumi could immediately see the stains of blood. An injury as small as bloodied knuckles was one that the Honmoon could typically take care of in a couple of hours.
...at least, the old one could. What did any of them know about the new one.
Mira shook sweat out of both of her ponytails, and for her to be as much of a mess as she currently was, Rumi knew that she would have been at that bag for hours, possibly the entire night. She couldn't really talk, though. She was getting bits and pieces of sleep at seemingly random hours between crying, turtle videos, and incredibly uncomfortable conversations. And right now it was time for that last one.
Rumi's defensive instincts had told her to put on a sweater, a turtleneck, a long-sleeved tee, and maybe even a winter coat in preparation for whatever was coming for her, but she'd fought those instincts and come down in nothing but a tank top and shorts anyway. Mira was dressed similarly, though that was hardly unusual for her. And the temperature in here was abnormally high. Rumi wondered if Mira had messed with the thermostat for the specific purpose of discouraging covering her skin.
Mira could be like that sometimes. Passive-aggressive. A bit conniving. She tried not to be, but given the family she grew up in, it was surprising she wasn't like that more often. And for all her faults, Rumi drastically preferred blunt, angry, aggressive Mira to this. Mira obviously liked herself better that way too.
Just one more sign of how unhappy this all made her.
Mira kicked the pile of sand, sending it spraying in a random direction before stalking over to the nearest exercise machine and sitting on it. Jacobs ladder. It didn't even have a place to sit, but she sat on it anyway. The nearest equipment to that was an elliptical. Rumi sat on that despite it also lacking a seat. And then the two of them just...looked at each other.
It took all of Rumi's strength not to try and cover up her patterns. Seeing Mira drag her eyes up and down her body, Rumi felt completely undressed, and in a fairly literal sense, she was. Zoey had been going out of her way to avoid looking (which Rumi didn't like either, but she had no idea what to do about it), but Mira was the opposite, staring shamelessly and bluntly with her usual unreadable expressions. Despite how she tried to resist it, a shiver went through Rumi, and she rubbed her arms and felt goosebumps.
"You know, I wanted a tattoo." It was the first thing Mira said. Rumi looked at her and saw her usual resting face, maybe just a bit more tense and angry than normal. "Zoey and I talked about it at the bathhouse once." The feeling of all the wasted time and missed conversations settled in Rumi's stomach like a boulder, and she wondered if that longing and the self-flagellation that came with it would ever go away. "I asked her what she'd get, and she had about a billion ideas, because of course she did." Mira laughed, and a small laugh worked its way out of Rumi's chest too. Their Zoey. No matter what, they would both always love her and want to make her happy. So that was one thing they had in common. "But she said she'd never be able to handle how much it would hurt. I was like, 'girl, you literally fight demons, what?' but she just wasn't having it."
A few more laughs escaped both of them, and Rumi shook her head. After a moment, though, she looked around the gym. "Should...should she be here for this? Zoey?" She asked, as if "she" could mean anyone else in the universe.
"If I thought she should, we wouldn't be having this conversation at five AM." A light jab. Familiar. Almost friendly. Rumi hadn't sorted out how she felt about those yet, and from the way Mira had been avoiding them, she hadn't either. But it made things feel more real.
It made her feel more human.
"So..." Rumi had no idea where Mira was going with this, and she hadn't given her any clues when she texted her to come meet at this ungodly hour. So instead of trying to guess, she decided to follow her lead. "Did you have any ideas? For tattoos?"
"A few, yeah." Mira nodded. "Obviously we weren't gonna be able to get any. Not while we're still the ones keeping the Honmoon up, anyway. And if I got one, I wouldn't just want one to have one, I'd want it to be something people see." That sounded like Mira. She paused for a moment, then looked Rumi in the eyes. "One of my ideas was patterns."
Rumi felt herself inhale sharply and her eyes widened. Her gaze shot briefly to her arm, then back to Mira. "Like...like demon patterns?" She nodded. That fact...the bolus of emotion in Rumi's stomach was too dense and too mixed up to even start unpacking right now. "Why?" was all that came out of her mouth.
Mira shrugged. "I think they look cool."
That was
...
Actually, yeah, that also sounded like Mira.
A larger breath than she realized she'd taken hissed out of Rumi's chest, something like a laugh tacked onto the end of it. "I think that would be kind of a bad idea, though."
Takedown played in her head.
Rumi swallowed it. Swallowed everything associated with it.
Focus on now.
"Oh yeah, terrible idea," Mira said, twisting her body to sit underneath the Jacobs ladder and lean back against it. That still couldn't possibly be comfortable. Then again, neither was sitting on one foot of an elliptical, but here they were anyway. "Zoey pointed that out right off the bat. She went even further than just the imposter thought, though. She said that even if she knew it was really me, Celine might kill me if she saw me with them." Mira folded her hands in front of her face and stared at Rumi, who was suddenly under the tree again. "Apparently not."
"Yeah," it breathed out of Rumi's mouth without her meaning to say anything. "Apparently not."
She could still feel the shawl around her arms. She could still feel the blade against her hands.
"Hey." Mira's sharp voice brought her back. Aggressive, but not unkind. Rumi pulled her eyes back to hers, and she marveled at just how pretty the color brown could be. "You're thinking about something." Rumi's immediate instinct was to lie. She'd started shaking her head already before consciously forcing herself to nod instead. Mira nodded back. "Wanna talk about it right now?" She shook her head far more rapidly. "Cool. Sounds like a Zoey conversation anyway."
Oh god, telling Zoey about that. Telling Mira would be bad enough, but Zoey...
"So what makes this not a Zoey conversation?"
That question had been in Rumi's head, but she wasn't the one who said it. Instead, they both turned around and saw Zoey wander in from the stairwell, wiping bleary eyes on the sleeves of a sweater that, from its size on her, was almost certainly stolen from Mira. Even so, despite being clearly fresh off of not nearly enough sleep and barely containing a yawn, Zoey stared at them both with a hardness she rarely possessed.
After a long moment, Mira sighed. "The fact that it's probably gonna turn into a fight. Not an argument. A fight."
Well. Points for self-awareness. "I don't want to fight you, Mira," Rumi said.
"Yeah, believe it or not, I don't want to fight you either!" She spat the words out with more venom than was typical of a peace offering. "But that doesn't mean it isn't gonna happen."
"You say that like you have no control over it," Rumi said, a bit of anger sputtering in her chest.
Mira glared down at the ground. "Sometimes it feels like I don't." And for a long, uncomfortable moment, nobody spoke.
After a while, Zoey moved, sitting in the middle of the floor, between and away enough from them to be equidistant from both. Rumi didn't have to wonder if she'd chosen that spot on purpose. She knew she had. Zoey took a breath, then looked at Mira. "Please don't decide what conversations I should or shouldn't be here for."
Mira made a small noise that could be charitably read as affirmative. "Promise you'll leave if you have to."
Zoey opened her mouth, then slowly closed it and shook her head. "No. I can't promise that. I can't even promise to try right now."
A strange, strangled little laugh came out of Mira, and she gestured broadly at Zoey. "See? Now that's how you fucking handle a—nnnf." She buried her hands in her hair, gripping at the roots and loosening her already precarious hair ties. "Fuck me." After another moment, she sat back up straight and looked at Zoey. "Okay. I'm gonna start with the shit you should definitely be here for, and we'll get to the other shit later. Cool?" She looked at both of them, and Rumi nervously nodded. Apparently Zoey had nodded too, because Mira finished the circle with her own nod. "Cool."
There were a long few moments of Mira just sitting with her head in her hands. Rumi could see Zoey wriggling anxiously, but she studiously kept her mouth shut. Honestly, she wished her body wanted to wriggle anxiously. Then at least she'd have something to do other than sit here and stew. Eventually, though, Mira lifted her head, though the stare she leveled at Rumi almost made her wish that she hadn't. "Alright. So. When were you gonna tell us that demons are people?"
Rumi wasn't sure what she expected, but it wasn't that. "What?"
"When were you gonna tell us that demons are people with feelings and desires beyond eating souls and shit?" Her voice was tense and angry, but she was very deliberately keeping it below a yell, most likely for Zoey's sake. "Or that some of them are literally people whose souls still exist or can grow back or whatever the fuck? Because that seems like pretty relevant information to our jobs!"
Rumi didn't have an answer to that. At least, not one that came easily to mind. She only learned that because of Jinu (and that wound was so raw that even thinking his name hurt badly), and Jinu had only talked to her because of her patterns, so with the secrets layered on top of secrets... "I don't know."
Mira's head drooped, just hanging between the knees she'd pulled up to her chest and beneath the arms she'd crossed over them. Zoey was the one that spoke up next, and her big wet eyes squeezed Rumi's heart until it bled. "You would have told us eventually, right?"
"Yes, of course!"
It came out of Rumi's mouth without thinking, and Mira's glare was suddenly leveled at her again. "When? After the Golden Honmoon when it didn't even matter to us anymore? When we just had to fucking sit with that information for the rest of our lives? Or when your demon patterns were all magicked away, and you never had to talk to us about one of the biggest parts of your fucking life?!" Rumi flinched and Mira grabbed onto her hair again and let out half of a scream as she pulled it.
"Mira, it's okay! It—"
"No. No," Rumi cut Zoey off. She knew she was instinctively going to try and de-escalate, and that that would just make Mira madder right now. And if Mira turned her rage on Zoey, this conversation would hit a brick wall with everyone hating themselves. "She's right. I really can't think of a time that I would have told you if the Golden Honmoon worked the way it was supposed to. And if it had gotten rid of my patterns..." Rumi held onto both of her biceps, staring at the shimmering lines all over them. "Then I probably would have kept that secret my whole life. Or tried to, at least."
"Did we even know that it would work like that, though?" Zoey spoke up again, but this time she was asking a question. That was safe. There were very few questions Zoey could ask that would set Mira off, even when she was wound up and angry like this. And the look on her face now was less scared and more curious. "I mean, the Golden Honmoon was meant to seal off Gwi-Ma and all the other demons. I know that you thought that would help Jinu, you wouldn't have told him that if you didn't, but that kind of..." Zoey made a criss-crossing pattern with her hands. "If it's supposed to take the demon-ness out of you even while you're up here, then why wouldn't it take all the demons up here away too? And if it isn't going to do that, then why would it do anything to your patterns?"
Rumi opened her mouth, then slowly closed it, and she heard a grim chuckle from Mira. "See? If you'd told us about this shit, Zoey could have asked these great questions years ago. Or at least before everything completely went to literal hell. And even if it did take your patterns away," Mira finally raised her head, her ponytails having given up and left her long hair to fall in front of her face, only stripes of her eyes glaring out. "What would that do? Would you live? Would you die? Would whatever was left of you even still be you? Did you even think about that?" Rumi's fists balled up and pressed hard into her lap, and Mira's body almost imperceptibly tightened. "You did."
Zoey's eyes were on her again. Rumi could feel them. She couldn't bring herself to look at her, but nothing could protect her from the tiny noise in Zoey's throat that she could tell she was trying so hard not to make. "Yeah," Rumi forced out. "I did. I thought that—" something that wasn't quite a sob caught inside of her, and she glared down at the patterns on her thighs. "I thought it would take away everything bad in me. That I wouldn't be me anymore. That I'd be the person that everyone loves. Not the demon that everyone should hate."
Her body was shoved off of the elliptical and onto the floor, and Rumi realized that Zoey was suddenly in her arms, holding her tightly and nuzzling into her chest. "Rumi, why? Why would you want to become someone else? Why would you think that we want you to be different?!"
A shock of anger suddenly flared up in Rumi's chest, and she pushed Zoey away. "You did want me to be different!" Zoey blinked up at her from the floor, and Rumi felt Mira's glare on her, and she shook her head and pulled Zoey back into a hug, though she kept it brief. "I'm sorry." That cut off the hyperventilating Zoey had started to do, and the wrath of the eyes nearby simmered back down to its current default. "But you did want me to change, though. You wanted me to take down my walls. To show you everything. And—and I'm not even saying you were wrong, but—" She huffed and gripped her biceps again, but was surprised when Zoey gently pried her nails away from her skin. "...but that's still something different from the person I was. The person I was choosing to be. So you did want me to change."
"Yeah." Mira responded bluntly. "And we probably still want that. I definitely still want that. Because all that shit doesn't go away in a day or two. But it wouldn't be the first time we've changed. And it wouldn't be ripping a whole fucking half of you out. We didn't want to change what was underneath, we just wanted to see it."
Rumi's throat contracted as she spoke. "But what if you hated me?"
Zoey pulled one of Rumi's hands into both of hers and held it tight. For what felt like the first time, she trailed her fingers over one of Rumi's patterns, touching it gently, almost reverentially. "Rumi, we could never hate you."
"Don't speak for me," Mira said flatly. After a long, tense moment, she sighed. "But if I don't hate you right now, I have no idea when or how I possibly could. And I don't hate you right now. Not even close."
An immense tension snapped inside of Rumi's chest, and her face tried to twist into a smile and a grimace all at once as she started sobbing in earnest. Zoey held her as she did, wiping her face and whispering reassurances despite her own tears. And before Rumi even realized she'd left, Mira threw a tissue box at the two of them and sat back down in front of the ladder. Now all three were on the floor, and it was almost funny how much more comfortable that was.
Zoey and Rumi continued crying for a while, but when they were down to mostly sniffles, Zoey looked over at Mira and took one arm from around Rumi, holding it open to her instead. Mira shook her head, and Zoey almost started crying again, but Mira holding a hand up stopped her. "Not now. But not never." Though her lower lip was quivering, Zoey nodded, and she gently pulled herself away from Rumi, then crab-walked back to her original triangular position. A laugh forced itself out of Rumi at the absurdity of her moving that way, and through the curtain of Mira's hair, she could see her crack a smile too. "It's going to take me a while to sort this shit out. It'll take us all a while. Don't lie and say it won't." Rumi nodded, and though she could see Zoey swallowing back discomfort, she nodded too. A much grimmer, less pleasant smile stretched over Mira as she finally combed some of her hair back out of her face. "I mean, it's not every day that you find out that you're a mass murderer."
Rumi hadn't even though of that.
She wasn't sure if it genuinely hadn't occurred to her or if she just hadn't let herself think about it, but now that she was, masses of ice were forming inside of her body. Her whole stomach and chest felt jagged, and she put a hand over her mouth, half afraid she'd throw up.
"No you aren't."
It was so simple it was shocking. Rumi was staring at Zoey, and she could tell Mira was too. She'd said it almost as if she was confused by the idea, and the possibility that it hadn't sunk in for her yet turned every bone inside of Rumi to splinters.
"Zoey, are you fucking serious?" Mira's voice cracked and shook with the effort it took to keep it below a yell. "Are you for real right now? Don't try to peacekeep this away! Demons are people! We killed demons! We killed people!"
"No we didn't." Out of the corner of her eye, Rumi saw Mira's jaw go slack. But Zoey looked...not quite calm, but certainly not as panicked as she should have been right now. "We don't kill demons, Mira."
"That—that's literally all we fucking do!"
"No we don't. If we did, then we wouldn't see the same demons over and over." Mira blinked and slumped backwards. Rumi felt a bit off balance too, and Zoey looked genuinely confused by their reactions. "Like, you remember catface guy, right?" No, Rumi did not remember "catface guy". She didn't even have a clue what a "catface guy" was. Mira's blank stare told her she didn't know either, and Zoey made a small frustrated noise. "You know! Catface guy! He had a cleft palate, but he wasn't one of the kinds of demons who normally do that, so he kind of had a speech impediment. And what about the sword lady? She always attacked with swords!"
"A lot of demons use swords?" Rumi said almost thoughtlessly.
"Yeah, but she was really good at it! You seriously don't remember? And her patterns went all like dzt-zt-zt-zt-zt!" Zoey drew a chaotic pattern on her arm with her finger, and when neither of the others reacted, she rocked back and forth, growling out angry little noises. "Ugh, come on! Mister fishy? Yelly sergeant guy? The one who was always on lampposts? Nothing?"
"I..." Rumi blinked. "I think I remember the lamppost guy."
"Yeah, them!" She definitely didn't know them as well as Zoey seemed to think she did, but looking back, she did remember. "And we fought them all dozens of times! So we're not actually killing them, we're just sending them back to the underworld, right? That means none of us are murd-oouah!?"
Zoey's rant was suddenly cut off when Mira shot across the gym and pulled her into her arms. From where Rumi was sitting, and with Mira's face unblocked, she could see the tears pressing down her cheeks, and her whole body shook with raw-voiced sobs. "Zoey!" Mira choked out as Zoey slowly wrapped her arms around her and patted her back. Mira pushed her away, but clung to her shoulders, and Zoey just stared with confusion, looking even more baffled when Mira suddenly peppered her whole face with kisses, pressing a long one to her forehead before yanking her into another hug. "Zoey, I love you so much!" This wasn't the first time Rumi had heard Mira say that. It was even far from the first time she'd heard her say it seriously. But she'd never heard it tear out of her throat with so much emotion. "I love you and your beautiful autistic genius fucking brain," she whimpered, one hand grasping at Zoey's shirt and the other clutching her loose hair as she broke down into wracking sobs. Even though Mira had become more emotionally open and shed small tears more often, this was the sort of cry that Rumi could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen.
"I love you too?" Zoey seemed genuinely bewildered, but she still held Mira in her arms, comforting her physically and murmuring calming things into her ears.
God, they really adored each other.
Rumi wanted to join. Rumi wanted to join their hugs and the soft kisses Zoey was pressing into Mira so badly. But not now.
Not now. Maybe not ever. But definitely not now.
It took a while for Mira to calm down. It always did when she cried like this. Eventually, at Zoey's encouragement, Rumi scooted over to them and started rubbing Mira's back, and Mira didn't object. Physical touch was still a bit unclear and uncertain, but moments like this helped. Eventually, Mira calmed enough to back away, though her face was still blotchy and soaked with tears. Even so, she looked seriously at them, though she backed up enough to give all of them some breathing room. "Okay. Cool. We're not mass murderers. Good to know. That is..." she made a sound that was something between a sigh, a sob, and a laugh. "That's really fucking good to know. But we're still in limbo here. Because literally everything we know about demons is wrong."
"Well, not every-everything," Zoey said. "We still know that they can all take and eat souls. And we know the various types and their strengths and weaknesses."
"Okay, yeah, but I'm not talking about pokemon card shit here, Zoey," Mira said, and Rumi rested a hand on one of Zoey's thighs. She knew Mira wasn't trying to be mean or insulting, but that was the sort of thing that could definitely set Zoey off on a bad day. Zoey gave her a tiny smile and rested a hand on top of hers before turning back to Mira. "I'm talking about basic fucking fundamentals. The shit that Celine drilled into our heads day and night. 'Demons don't have feelings,' wrong. 'No matter how human they act, demons can never be reasoned with,' dead wrong. 'Anything with patterns is a demon, and all demons need to die'..." Her voice turned into a growl, and Rumi could tell from the way her hands were twitching that she wanted to summon her Gok-do, a tic that put a spike of fear through her chest. She wasn't sure if Mira noticed it (she probably did), but Zoey clearly did, as she began rubbing Rumi's hand more firmly, comforting her. "Completely dead fucking wrong. And she fucking knew it with that one. What else has she been wrong about? What else has she been lying to us about? How much of what we learned over the last nearly a decade do we need to just flush down the fucking toilet? And don't say it's irrelevant! Just because no demons have gotten through the new Honmoon yet doesn't mean none ever will. They have all the time in the world to figure it out. And if I was a person literally trapped in hell because of us, yeah, I'd be pretty pissed too."
Zoey spoke, voice soft and uncomfortable, even as she was rubbing Rumi's hand with her thumb. "Could we ask her to tell us the truth?"
Mira snorted. "I dunno, Rumi. Could we ask her?" Rumi's shoulders hunched in, and Mira scoffed. "Yeah, that's what I thought. And this?" She took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair again, finding one of the ties and pulling it back into a single ponytail. "This is the part that's probably gonna turn into a fight. So if you wanna get out of here, Zoey, now's a great time." Rumi felt the way Zoey tensed beside her, but she also felt how she rapidly shook her head. Mira sighed, then got up to her feet and gestured for the others to stand too.
"Alright," Rumi said, following Mira's lead and leaning against a random piece of exercise equipment. "What are we fighting about, Mira?"
Mira scoffed again. "I'd love it if the answer was nothing, but it probably isn't." She glared openly at Rumi, and even though Zoey tried to keep holding her hand, Rumi felt the need to gently push her away. The tiny nod Mira gave her told her she appreciated it. But it didn't make the fact that she pulled herself off of the equipment and started stalking the room any less intimidating. "So. I want you to apologize for lying to me."
Rumi blinked. "I...I have, Mira—"
"Not to us," Mira cut her off. "To me. Look, I fucking hate that you lied about the patterns, alright? But I get it. I'm not over it, but I'm way more pissed at Celine than I am at you." Somehow, that wasn't at all comforting, and Rumi felt the need to pace the room and keep some distance between her and Mira.
"Then," Rumi squinted and looked down. "Then I don't know what you're talking about."
"You haven't even thought about it?" Mira's jaw set, and Rumi could practically hear her teeth grinding against each other. "I guess that makes sense. A whole lifetime of lying and hiding? One more probably doesn't seem like much."
"Mira—"
"I fucking warned you, Zoey!" Mira cut Zoey off before she could say more than her name, but some of her anger deflated at the scared look on her face. "This is why I didn't want you here. Not just because it's a fight. But because it has nothing to do with you. This is between me and Rumi."
Hurt and frustration bubbled in Rumi's chest, but she did her best to bite it back. Despite knowing this was the wrong answer, there was only one answer Rumi could give, and she swallowed dryly. "Mira, I'm sorry, but I really don't remember."
A half-hysterical laugh pushed out of Mira's mouth, and she shook her head. "Fuck, you really don't. Okay. Fine. Let me remind you. Remember our little one-table signing with the Saja boys?" Rumi nodded slowly, and a mirthless smirk twisted onto Mira's lips. "Great. Then how about the talk that we had that night?"
"Yes? Is...is that what we're talking about?"
"OF COURSE IT IS!" Mira shouted, and she froze for a minute, wrapping her head up in her arms and yanking her hair, muffling a scream into herself. When she turned back, there were tears in her eyes again, but Rumi had never seen this much of her anger directed at her. "You fucking lied to me, Rumi!"
"I-I know that!" Her patterns itched, and Rumi wished that she could grow bristles to protect herself from this. "Do you want me to apologize for every single time I lied to you ever? Are you going to hold this over my head the rest of our lives?"
"Yeah, maybe, if we don't sort this out! That's why I'm doing this shit!" Mira yelled. "You really don't see how that night is different? Why I maybe have some serious fucking feelings about it?" Rumi couldn't find an answer, and Mira tried to blink back her tears, snarling.
Her fingers were twitching. She wanted her weapon.
Rumi's blood felt like ice.
Mira shouted wordlessly again, then rampaged over to a treadmill and grabbed the bar on the side of it with both hands, keeping them there as she glared back at Rumi. "Because I fucking asked you, Rumi! I saw that something was wrong and I fucking asked you! I know you have secrets! I know you have walls up! And I tried to live and be okay with that even though I thought you might be fucking cutting yourself!" That brought Rumi out of her head, but Mira didn't give her enough time to react to it. "But I saw that something was wrong and I asked you about it! And do you know what you said?" It took Rumi a second too long, but she remembered the answer and her blood ran cold for a completely different reason. "You said, 'Mira, I'm not keeping anything from you. I promise.'"
"You—" Rumi looked and she saw Zoey, clearly crying, but going out of her way to avoid interrupting them. Right now, though, her eyes were wide and shocked. "You really said that to her?"
"Yeah. She did," Mira spat. "And I apologized and said I sounded crazy, and she didn't disagree. She just let me apologize and berate myself for being right."
"I'm..." Rumi's heart clenched. "Mira, I'm sorry—"
"Yeah, I know that you're sorry!"
"Well then what do you want me to say?!"
"I don't fucking know!" Mira's arms suddenly bent, and before Rumi could react, she had overturned the treadmill, heaving it onto its side and breaking the far arm bar. Zoey was sniffing and weeping in the corner, and Mira's body was trembling, each breath heavy and deliberate. "I don't fucking know what I want you to say. I thought I wanted you to apologize, but apparently that's not good enough for me. All I know is that you lied to me. Not because of Celine. There was only you and me in that room." Even though lies by omission were something Rumi was currently being yelled at for, this was absolutely the wrong time to correct her on the room's occupants at the time. "And then you told me that not everything is about my insecurities."
That was a knife to the heart. And Rumi deserved it. She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I...I did apologize for that," she said weakly. "And I meant it."
"Yeah. I bet you did." Mira hadn't turned to look at her since throwing the treadmill. Now she was just staring down at it as she spoke. "But it didn't change anything."
Rumi swallowed again. Her throat only got tighter. "It didn't," she forced out, on the edge of a sob.
"And when you said that...when you made that promise to me...both of those times, you knew you were lying." She couldn't exactly defend herself on that. "You didn't break a promise, Rumi. That promise was completely fucking worthless the second you said it."
She only barely held back tears as she forced out two more words. "It was."
"So now—" Mira's voice cracked and started to waver. "H-how am I ever supposed to trust you again? Because I want to! I want to trust you! Because I love you, and I know that my instincts can be wrong! My instincts are what made me abandon Zoey to Gwi-ma! Because my brain is always telling me that this isn't real! That my family isn't real! That your love isn't real! And all I can do is trust you to make it wrong, but you lied to me, Rumi!" She whirled around, and Rumi saw the wrath on her face, lines of tears all the way down her narrow cheeks as she screamed. "You lied and I hurt you, and then when you left, I just left Zoey to die!" That last word broke her, and the anger fell from her face, replaced by a despair that frightened Rumi even more. "I left Zoey to die." A barely-there laugh choked out of her, tears still rolling down her face as she stared at the ground. "I say that like it's your fault. Like you made me do that. No. Zoey..." a sob shook through her body. "I love her. I love her so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with her." The fact that that put an additional crack in Rumi's chest felt like the stupidest thing in the world, and she bit down on her lip to try and focus. "I want that with you too. But you were gone. And my brain or Gwi-ma or fucking whoever told me that it didn't make sense that you two would love me. That I didn't deserve to have a family. And I...my instincts were right once. I'd listened to you instead of them, and everything went to shit. So how could I listen to Zoey?" Laughs and sobs started spilling out of Mira, and she covered her eyes with her arm. "Jesus, I'm so full of shit. Like that makes anything I did okay." Her legs folded and she slumped as if they had been kicked out from beneath her. "Like any of that changes that I abandoned you both when you needed me."
Those were the last words she said before she fell into tears again. Not her light cries that she would share with the two of them, or the gut-wrenching sobs that ripped her apart. These were just small, hopeless noises that shook her as her body crumpled to the ground. Rumi stared. She stared and stared and stared, her own body shuddering with tears, feeling exhausted and dehydrated from all of them, and desperately waiting for Zoey. For Zoey to come in and offer her comfort, forgiveness, love, all the things that she knew she had in spades, especially for Mira.
But Zoey didn't come.
Rumi looked around, her eyes blurry, and when she blinked them clearer, she saw Zoey tucked into a corner. She expected to see her covering her ears, or curled up into a ball, but instead, found Zoey glaring at her. The second their eyes met, Zoey lifted one arm and pointed aggressively at Mira, still sobbing and slumped on the floor. "Zoey, I..." Rumi mouthed, shaking her head as her throat was too closed to speak. Zoey shook her head much more vigorously and pointed again, and Rumi found that she couldn't disobey her.
So she started walking. It was one of the longest walks she'd taken in her life. And when she stood in front of Mira, she still had no idea what she could say. After standing for far too long, eventually she just collapsed with her, kneeling down so she could pull Mira up and into her arms. "It's okay, Mira," she whispered, rubbing her sweat-soaked back. "It's okay."
"It's not!" Mira choked out between sobs.
"...It's not." And Rumi just held onto her and cried.
At some point, they were just breathing. Their breaths were synched. Deep and slow. Rumi didn't know if it was because of the Honmoon or just because of who they were, but whatever it was had been unconscious. "Mira," she whispered, afraid to speak too loud for fear of her voice breaking again. "I don't know if this is what you want to hear, but..." she swallowed. "I forgive you. I forgive you for leaving me. For raising your weapon at me. I-I'm not over it, I don't know when I will be, but—" another sob forced its way out of her. Only one though. "But I forgive you."
Mira shook in her grip in every way someone could. Sobs, tremors from fear, tremors from exhaustion, and the unsteady rock of a body only held up by someone else. The arms that had hung limp and dead at her sides slowly lifted and wrapped around Rumi's back too. "I can't forgive you yet. Not for lying to me so much for the past few weeks. But I think—" she choked and swallowed. "I think I can almost forgive you for hiding the patterns. And if I can't yet, I will soon. Because I get it. Now that I know who you are, I get it. And I hate it. But I get it."
They held each other for a few more moments, then Mira pulled away slightly and looked into the corner. "Zoey?" Her voice was raw, but stronger than before. And it was barely a second before Zoey barreled into the two of them, letting out a scream that she'd clearly been holding in for most of their fight. "I love you, Zoey," Mira whimpered as she held her tight, and Rumi pulled an arm free and wrapped it around her too. "I love you so much, and I'll never abandon you again as long as I fucking live."
"I love you too!" Zoey cried, clinging to both of them. "I love you, and I love Rumi, and I want to spend the rest of my life with both of you too! I want to be together for as long as we live!"
"I—" Rumi trembled. "I want that too. I never want to leave you again, because both of you..." she swallowed and tightened her grip on each of them. "You're home to me."
"Then you're home," Mira whispered. "You're home, and I'll never lose you again."
Rumi had no idea how long the three of them just clung to each other, sobbing. She also didn't know quite how they ended up in her room, apart from a vague awareness that they had gotten water at some point. But she stared out the window at the sunrise, then stared back at the two girls clinging to her, hair matted, clothes rumpled, destroyed.
And with the light reflecting and refracting through all of them, her home was so beautiful that it hurt.