Chapter Text
It’s been 8 months since that nightmare of a night keeps replaying in her head. Or maybe 9? Celine’s been losing track of time lately.
There’s not much worth remembering on the island. But Celine preserves everything with military precision- Or at least, the closest resemblance you can get when you’re blackout drunk all the time. Which is to say, not much.
Which makes everything this. This- This sanctuary held everything dear to Celine, once. Still does. Holds Miyeong grave, one of the few areas that’s not disgustingly trashed. Shame burns heavyheavyheavy as Celine remembers throwing up on Miyeong’s grave once- She’d scrubbed it for the next 2 hours after waking up, tears mixing in with the soap and grime and bile.
Holds Poppy’s little shrine, composed of everything Celine could scrounge up, including that damned fucking pen, the only thing she had left of her soulmate.
Holds the hunter archives, full of information millenia old. That, honestly, Celine needs to stop clinging to like a petulant child and add to her will, under Rumi’s name.
Fuck, Rumi. It holds Rumi’s childhood bedroom, that Celine can’t–won’t–touch, won’t even open the door. Because God forbid Celine taints her precious girl once more. (And more selfishly- The room still smells of Rumi, if a bit stale. The scent of lilies is one Celine has accepted she’ll never smell again. Greedy, she pleads to keep this singular piece of the girl she ruined.)
More accurately, the sanctuary is a living museum of Celine’s failures. The flawless Kang Celine, taken 17 notches down off her hightop and then dunked into hell. Or the likes. Celine will admit, she feels as pathetic as can be, more than dramatic- But there’s no one there to judge anymore. No one at all.
Celine really grew up here. The house she lived in before was never a home. Where every single achievement, earned through blood, sweat, and tears, was simply a standard met. A child, desperately behind, scrambling and falling and begging to finally qualify as someone’s. And still, it only took 652,000 won and a whispered conversation before Celine was being told to pack her bags. Celine spares that a dry scoff that could maybe pass for amusement. It burns her throat, so she takes another swig.
Here, she’d been a hunter. Here, Celine had a purpose. Fix the world and make it right. Celine was good, great at trying. So she kept on trying, clumsy and fumbling and 3 steps behind. But she could be the best if she worked hard enough, and that was an addicting notion.
Celine was passable, her mentor had said. And then she met her soulmates, and her world shifted into place.
And then-
And then-
And then Miyeong died, with love on her lips and tears in her eyes and sin in her arms, and with her dying breath, she bound the other two parts of her soul to a demon. (Her fault, her fault, watched this demon do what Celine had only fantasized about- Laid down his life while two-thirds of Miyeong’s soul were too slow.)
And Celine and Poppy were making it, really. With a hurt so profound it ached to walk, and betrayal deep in their chests, they scrambled to care for this foreign being, between fights and tears and love so loud it couldn’t help but hurt.
(Celine would never admit it to anyone, but it almost felt domestic sometimes. Poppy and Rumi and her, something passing for a happy family. A glimpse into what life might’ve been like, if the Sunlight Sisters’ love was allowed to go beyond ‘sisters’ in 1980s Korea.)
And then Poppy died too–HER FAULT, why would she let her go alone, WHY–, and Celine was all alone again.
(And then Rumi came up to Celine, broken down, handing her a sword like she could ever slaughter the baby girl she’d raised. Her daughter. And that was Celine’s fault too.)
She’s so alone. The villagers don’t know her name- The woman at the top of the mountain is more of a whisper than a person, and Celine thinks that might be what she deserves.
Celine’s nursing a bottle of beer–God, Poppy would hate it, she made Celine herself and Miyeong swear to never drink more than casually. Another thing she missed, tally it up–, cheap and shitty in the way that it scrapes at her throat while going down. It’s maybe her second, or third? It doesn’t matter.
The empty bottles lay in a ditch near Miyeong’s graves, and she throws another in as she drains it- It’s the best Celine could do without littering on Miyeong’s grave. It’s also the least she could do, considering she spends most of her days leant up against the old Hunters Tree, staring mindlessly at her laptop and pretending to work.
Alcohol was the only thing that kept Celine warm after her soulmates left. But maybe that was the Honmoon, draping across her like a guardian. Their Honmoon, Celine’s only life goal, dissolved. Their Honmoon, that had kicked her out somewhere near HUNTR/X’s debut. Their Honmoon, replaced.
Celine still isn’t sure what the new Honmoon is, or how the girls managed it. She should’ve known they’d surpass any goal she’d ever set- Though it feels slimy to take credit for something that had been all their doing.
And in being the girls’ doing, it was rejecting her. She couldn’t interact with it at all, a silent observer as the iridescent barrier leers at her. On the particularly bad nights, Celine swears it leers at her, taunting.
Or maybe she’s losing her mind. Plausible.
Celine has had so much time to think. She chooses to spend it working endlessly of Sunlight Co., trying to leave Rumi something beneficial.
And in the in-betweens, Celine sobs. Celine has never cried this much, and finds she hates it just as much as she swore she did 3 decades ago. Celine sobs for everything she’s lost, everything she’s tainted. Celine sobs for herself, and consequently sobs for the people who knew her.
Knew, not know, because she has not spoken with HUNTR/X since it all went to shit. Because they made it very, very clear they do not want to associate with her- Specifically Mira and Zoey. Because the one time she tried to visit in person–Desperate and haggard, a month in, stumbling in with no warning and a greasy cardigan–she was faced with a gok-do pointed straight at her chest and 2 shin-kal impaled into the wall either side of Celine’s head, the two girls flanking Rumi protectively. Because Celine deserved every single bit of their bitter hate, even though it hurt to stomach the fact that Celine was the threat to Rumi.
And she spilled her heart out in a text message to Rumi- Not an explanation, not an excuse, not a plea. Nothing but the truth, finally.
Things like I’m so sorry and Please believe me I’ve always loved you and You were never a duty, you were one of the best things that’s ever happened to me and I should’ve tried so much harder to love all of you and You never had to be fixed until I broke you and Please let them be there for you like I never was and I’d like to keep trying if that’s okay and Knowing you was the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.
But Rumi had blocked her, and so she sent it via mail and email and through Mira and Zoey–Though Mira also had her blocked–and eventually asked Bobby give her a printed copy because please, Rumi needed to know at least this.
And there was never a response. And that’s fine, because who was Celine to demand anything from Rumi? Kind, wonderful, ever-loving Rumi, an innocent girl she’d drilled hate into.
Rumi had Mira and Zoey. Celine saw the way she had beamed the first day she met her soulmates- Watched all three of the girls settle, despite all the tension. How the light had never left her eyes since that day. (Except when she was kneeling in the dirt right in front of you, offering her sword, one eye molten gold, patterns flash, do something-)
The more Celine thought, the more sense it made. Even if Rumi ever wants to talk, Celine will stay hands-off. There’s no use forcing affection on someone you’ve so vividly failed. That you instilled shame and starved hunger for love down to her very marrow. Really, she should sit on her hands, or better yet, chop them off. Make sure she doesn’t taint what’s so very pure ever again.
(In a sick sort of way, Celine’s glad to be removed from Rumi’s new honmoon. Lord knows if she could touch it, her hatred would seep out of her soul, through her fingertips and into that holy barrier, turn it murky and red and angry like it so often does when Celine drinks. Celine’s certain that's when she most resembles the demons she hates so much.)
No, some desperate part of herself cries, rather pitifully. You were trying your best. Celine, weak as ever, agrees with herself, mumbling the words as empty platitudes as she drowns herself in another bottle.
(And what could she have done? The answer is; accepted Rumi just the way she was. But Celine is a coward. Such a coward, like only her mentor ever knew. Even now, with all the reflection and pleading and begging Celine’s done, she’d likely still flinch at the sight of Rumi’s patterns. Not for a lack of trying, but for the pure hatred that was instinct in her veins
It’s all that fueled her for nearly 40 years. Those patterns took her family away. It left her alone. But Celine took that anger out on a newborn who had as much control on her patterns as she did the weather. None of it stops Celine from cursing the honmoon and anyone else willing to listen on the bad nights. Which are consequently every night, now.)
She’s been sleeping by Miyeong’s grave for a good while now. That way, she doesn’t trash Rumi’s childhood home, though that’s a feeble excuse and it’s far too late. She pretends anyways, for she’s always been stubborn in the worst ways. Celine gets takeout and groceries (alcohol) when she remembers, tipping 30,000 won or more for the drivers who are kind enough to drive up to the middle of fuckass nowhere. On the days she has more energy, she lugs all of her trashbags to the front of the sanctuary- Regardless of the fact no one would come to pick them up. Celine spends her days thinking or drinking or filling out her will or figuring out how to make herself more useful to HUNTR/X.
God, she really needs to get a move on that will. There’s not much more here for her. Bobby would manage the girls. It’s really only a matter of who would maintain the sanctuary. She can ship everything from the hunter archives to their penthouse- Maybe Zoey can finally digitize the info like she was always suggesting. After all, the newer generation always seems to be right. Celine remembers the way Miyeong and Poppy used to push Han-chi- It was much harder for their mentor to say no to that duo.
Miyeong is her only confidante these days. Or ever, really, ever since her soulmates left her, but Celine’s typically much better at playing competent.
But, like she said before (did she?), there’s no one left to play it up for. Celine’s free to humiliate herself as thoroughly as she likes. And thinking, it’s quite tiring. Having the same thoughts loop in your mind over and over–WHY COULDN’T YOU LOVE ME–is exhausting. But maybe that’s due to the fact that Celine’s hardly moved more than 20 feet at a time in the past 4 months. (She can almost hear her mentor, there and taunting. What a pity of a hunter.)
She babbles. Celine babbles, rooting deep within her guts and pulling intestine after intestine until her innards are raw and glistening and bare upon Miyeong’s gravestone.
In her drunken haze, Celine registers the familiar ringing, but dismisses it without a thought. At best, a hallucination. At worst, some Sunlight employee or another. Rock bottom means that it was Bobby, and she knows he will be concerned. But there's not much he can do from across the globe, at least not overnight. No matter what, Celine’s still going to be sitting here. She is fantastic at rotting in her shame. (Maybe this is how it was always going to end for Celine, ever since she was that sniffling kid in the middle of an unforgiving living room).
Fully draped over the pristine stone, breath acrid as she lets out heaving sobs. Clothes damp from the soil and sweat, covered in dirt stains- Celine hadn’t bothered to take a shower today. Or for the past week, honestly. But there was no one there to witness her pitiful mess, except the ghosts of her past.
Your faults and fears must never be seen, Celine thinks bitterly, with a sardonic laugh that ended in another wet sob. She was nothing but her faults and fears. Celine folds both arms over the head of Miyeong’s gravestone–Take care of her. Cece, Poppy, please. Take care of- Her name’s Rumi. Please–and collapses her head into the slight bit of warmth.
It’s so, so cold. Celine is so, so cold.