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Embracing the flames.
If there is something that Zoey likes, it is thinking.
It may sound weird, but it’s her favorite way to pass time, there is nobody who can interrupt, or ignore, or judge her thoughts because those are, in fact, just for herself.
They can linger in good memories or concepts or turtles or in something more darker and private of herself.
It’s her safe space. Even if sometimes those thoughts can hurt her just the same. There is a weird comfort that it at least comes from her own hand …and not anyone else, not anymore.
So yeah, she’s guilty, okay? She daydreams a lot.
Even right now. With the white noise surrounding her, Zoey can only be lost in her thoughts. In the corner of her eyes she can see Mira hurried movements, right, they’re chasing Rumi, looking for answers, killing demons out of the way.
Zoey’s hands are moving on their own as well. Using her Shin-kals to slay demons as the ringing rhythm of Mira and Rumi’s yells itches her ears as background noise.
Her thoughts right now are reliving the past. More specifically their trainer sessions.
She was more awkward at that time, how could she now? She was trained under one of her idols (and bias!), breathing the same air as always-perfect-Rumi and sharing a room with the ever so cold Mira.
It honestly was a wonder how she survived that first week.
She was weak in the social thing, she recalls.
“What are you hiding from us?!” From the corner of her eyes, she can see Rumi pull away from Mira, her body language tense like she always does when about to put distance between them and her deeply guarded heart.
…maybe she is still weak socially.
A demon gets a little too close, coming from her back and succeeding in landing a hit on her, she kicks it out and turns around to see what happened.
The problem is Mira, she stopped moving all together. Why is that? Rumi looks oddly guilty. Demons are approaching, Mira breathing gets more heavy, not by adrenaline, but from a desperate attempt to hold back tears.
Zoey takes back control for her then, with a kick, a throw, a hit.
Zoey moves in a rhythm slaying those demons away, that it brings her back to her memories, she was not only bad at socializing, but with the whole slaying thing too.
She took as many practice hours as she could, but at the end of the day she always felt behind.
Mira was a natural with her Gok-do, there was a fury she efficiently used to land every hit.
Rumi always said she had years to learn and was very clumsy at first too. Like she wasn't only perfecting every hit, but also doing them with such glamour every time. She remembers sharing a gaze with Mira at those words, that being the first conversation she ever had with Mira with just silence, where they connected without need of anything else, like many years they would continue to do later, this time though, they did with only one thought in mind …that’s bullshit.
Zoey liked those types of gazes. Understanding each other with no need for work, it fluttered her stomach in warm feelings from the first time and continued to do so when Mira started to rest her forehead against her just to search her gaze for what felt like ages.
Maybe she did it to search for something, to make sure that Zoey didn’t hide anything. That she was real with her. But Zoey was too busy daydreaming and melting in her proximity and beautiful eyes to even care.
Now Mira’s gaze is fixed on her. She nods at her and soon their movements coordinate in a familiar choreography.
“I-I didn’t mean it like that.”
Rumi says her voice trembling in every word with very clear distress and even guilt.
Zoey is the one to pause to look at their leader. She is shaking and so very far from the perfect image she always pulled in the past.
Like the perfect Rumi who always landed everything right, proper, more than good, easily even.
…but also like the sweet woman who stayed with Zoey every time she insisted on practicing for longer. Even if Zoey wasted a whole day, night, and the morning of the other day in just trying.
Rumi stayed.
First in silence. Zoey hated those times.
But then Rumi started to bring snacks, forced breaks to make sure Zoey took them …and a lot of water too.
She still hated it. She wanted to get better, she needed that precious time to be able to keep up faster. Time was too primordial to waste.
But then Rumi started to give her tips here and there, quietly, casually between breaks. And Zoey started to stay longer in those to hear more.
And then Rumi started to be playful and goofy, and Zoey started to stay longer just to be more with Rumi.
When Zoey was the one to tremble, in frustration, pain, misery, Rumi continued to stay. Her goofy awkward smile was a memory she couldn't never shake, not when Rumi let her rest in her lap and stayed the rest of the day like that.
That day didn’t feel like a waste at all.
Rumi is the one trembling right now, though.
“...Rumi, we are not your enemies here, we’re just trying to help you.”
Zoey says. Tone softer, she can see Rumi slowly lift her gaze towards her, there is hope in those eyes who still look too guilty.
“...you’re taking her side…?”
Mira whispers, voice far from soft, the tone is hurt, hesitant, betrayed.
Right. Rumi had said something, she had hurt Mira.
“...I am not taking anyone's side.”
Zoey replies moving her gaze to stare into Mira fuming glare, Mira caved almost immediately, looking away, ashamed of her issues controlling the better of her once more.
“I think you’re my glue.”
She remembers Mira telling her once, while she let Zoey’s hands carefully try to do a tiny braid to match her with Rumi, it was a small surprise they were planning for her. Mira had already done Zoey’s ones.
“How come?”
She replied, a little loss at the very sudden change of theme.
“I mean…” Mira paused for a few seconds. “Sometimes… Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the past and I… end up picking back old habits. Defensive ones, like as if everyone were against me and I have to fight them back before they can hurt me first.”
Zoey didn’t know what to do with this information, her hands had paused, but only for a moment before she continued braiding.
“Do you feel like that with me?”
“No.”
“Hm.”
“W….with Rumi sometimes tho.”
Zoey finally looks into Mira’s eyes. But Mira, for once, isn’t looking at her to try reading her at all.
“She's just… hard to read and… it scares me, okay? She hides so much. And I know she’s good, she’s not, at all, liike my past. But… sometimes… I just can’t shake it off.”
“Well…” Zoey paused, finished the braid, a small smile forming in her face even with the heavy topic. “I am glad, you still keep trying anyways.” She whispered, planting a kiss on Mira’s forehead.
Soon Rumi came back home, almost cried at seeing them with matching braids to her signature hairstyle and hugged them both for the rest of the day. She really didn’t want to let go.
…she remembers noticing how Mira melted right into Rumi’s arms.
“We… We're scared of losing you.” Mira finally mutters, looking elsewhere, she’s still hurt, but she continues trying. Not for Rumi only, but for what Huntr/x represents, the three of them, together.
“...I don’t want to lose you either…” Rumi whispers back, her voice so… small, so quiet, shakily. It was a raw truth she finally dared to say …or that they finally noticed.
“Then please tell us what’s wrong with you.” Zoey insists, her voice so sincere, even if pleading, she honestly almost forgot they were fighting a whole growing wave of demons. She realized Mira and Rumi were the ones protecting her while being distracted.
Well, they didn’t really choose the best time to be vulnerable, did they?
Rumi, even in deep conflicting thoughts, slays a group of demons in a fast yet delicate movement.
One that she remembers Celine's praise in their training days.
Well, praise would be calling it too much, Celine didn’t really do that, she just nodded in approval and then continued with her teachings.
Oh how Celine loves her phrases, especially to teach.
From the classic “our flaws and fears must never be seen” to the “demons are never nice.”
Zoey guesses the last one is very true right now, here they are trying to reach a helping hand to their very dear and close friend they care for so so much…
…and well, those demons can’t seem to read the room (air? They are quite literally outside) and continue their mindless attack. Not very nice on their part.
But Zoey got too distracted, too into her thoughts that another wave of demons was already surrounding her. She tried to react, but like anything else, she was too slow to success.
She managed to kill two. Not really a very good number when it’s about a big crowd of demons. Zoey closed her eyes for the pain to come.
But she never felt it.
Instead she could easily hear a pained gasp, almost like a whimper, soft and trying too hard to not be heard. When she opened her eyes. Mira was bleeding in front of her.
Too much blood. Zoey didn’t realize how much harm was going for her.
“Mira!”
She doesn’t know if that was her voice or Rumi’s, she can only see red. Red dripping to the floor, red in the Hoonmoon’s lines breaking and hurting just the same. Red in Mira’s body, in Mira’s hand as she tries to stop it.
But there are still so many demons, more and more. And Mira is hurt and Zoey can only see red.
Soon enough she is in rhythm with Rumi, in a beat to kill, to slay, to disappear demons, because “demons are never nice” as Celine once said.
Because “demons are only evil” and she can see it in the red shine of the injured Hoonmoon. In the injury of Mira.
Her Shin-kal are pointed to kill, neck, heart, eyes, it doesn’t matter. Zoey can finally agree a hundred percent with one of Celine’s favorite phrases.
“A demon with no feelings doesn't deserve to live.”
It’s so obvious.
Waves of demons continue to appear, but Zoey does just fine taking them down, tearing them apart, so they can't reach Mira, because Zoey can only see red.
But then she can only see purple.
Rumi is fighting alongside her, that’s the beat. That’s their harmony. She covers her back and Rumi covers hers. All for it to give Mira time to stop the bleeding, the red.
But there is barely any Hoonmoon holding on, it would be an underestimation to say there are a lot of demons. It’s just way too many.
Rumi and Zoey get injured anyway. Clothes thorn, demon claws scratching their skin, but nothing too serious to stop them.
Or that was what Zoey thought, only to see purple. The shine of patterns, of the hideous marks that distincts the demons from the human. That unshakable truth is all over Rumi’s skin. Rumi is covered in purple.
Purple.
Like her hair when she let Zoey braid it between whispered laughs, the three of them, on their beloved couch, limbs interlocked where Zoey was more focussed in the purple surrounding her than the movie on their TV, because Rumi hair was so long and soft and… Zory didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Purple.
Like Rumi’s favorite color, the easy tears she shared when Mira brought her flowers that were just as purple. She teased Rumi so much, as if Zoey weren’t crying as well because Mira also brought flowers to her, her favorites. She still remembers Mira looking away, red in the face as she pleaded for them to stop crying or she would do as well.
Purple.
Like the injuries on their skin, that in battle Rumi got the most and she never let them see.
Purple.
Like the discarded hoodie Rumi stopped using because those sleeves …were too short.
Purple.
Like the flash that flinches her right now, because Rumi is beside her right now, slaying demons because Zoey, once more, got distracted.
She looks up at Rumi, wondering if the woman saw her flinch away from what once was a safe no mere seconds ago. What she is met through, it is not only that Rumi realized, but that she knows.
Her patterns are showing. But Rumi still chooses to continue fighting, to continue protecting them. Even if Zoey can easily see her fear, her breath too fast, too panicked as the purple in Rumi continues to grow, towards her hands, her face, her legs.
Their harmony breaks.
Zoey can’t keep up, not like this. She can lift her hands, she still has her Shin-kals in her hold, but is useless. Zoey can’t see more than purple, than red. It’s too much, all over everything she sees, so much that Zoey can only comprehend the magenta that interlocks both tones.
There is a ringing. It's Mira's voice, no. It’s Mira’s screams.
They are fighting, she realizes. Rumi and Mira, Mira and Rumi, their voices mix with their magenta tone.
They are hurt.
They are fighting.
Because Rumi is a demon, and there is no denying it anymore.
The Hoonmoon that remains is useless.
She can hear Rumi cry.
“Not a demon, never, I didn’t ask for this. I- I was born like this, I’m only half-!”
“Then why the hell did you find the need to lie? How can I ever believe you if all this time, all of this, was a damn utter lie!”
Zoey closes her eyes.
The sounds are too much.
Huntr/x screams. The fire. The flames. It’s Gwi-Ma, he’s coming closer next to the cutting sounds of the Hoonmoon lines breaking.
Then a laugh. Growing closer and closer. Gwi-Ma…
Zoey opens her eyes. Her gaze is first fixed on the floor. In the bloodstains. Mira didn’t manage to close the wound.
Mira is still bleeding.
Zoey then lifts her gaze.
Rumi is no longer human, one of her eyes is golden, she has fangs, claws, marks… Zoey realizes Rumi isn’t fighting as fiercely the demons that attack her like she does with the demons that attack them.
And like a mock, she remembers a phrase she repeated like a mantra.
“Everything with patterns has to die.”
But is it?
How can she say that to the same woman who pressed kisses directly to the corner of her lips? How can she? When she still remembers the exact shade of pink her face turned when Zoey found Rumi a bit too flirty with Mira to be just joking.
How can she say that when she remained awake to watch her girls sleep? Both of them. Rumi’s honest, relaxed face when she sleeps and Mira’s awful snores?
It’s simple, she can’t.
Even if Huntr/x is meant to hunt demons, to protect humanity, to do whatever they have in hand to make sure to lose as little human souls as possible.
No demon can be spared, she knows this.
The three of them know this, as the hunters meant to support the barrier between them, they knew since their trainer days when they were just teenagers.
But Zoey, as she watches the flames grow, the ringing feeling in her ears as the fight continues, not only of demons, but between them.
Zoey never felt so much duty like she is doing right now.
Not because it’s meant to be done.
But because she wants to.
Protect their human souls.
Ignore your life for those that are more important.
It is so simple, because they’re just mere facts. Zoey can’t care less of Mira’s yells, of the hurt in her tone, of the fear in her body language. Nor care of Rumi’s tears and screams that hurt the Hoonmoon with the shining patterns all over her skin.
After all, she always knew Rumi’s soul it’s worth saving, just as much as how important Mira's life is, at least, to Zoey.
So if you really think of it, Zoey is just doing her work, her duty.
There is nothing to regret, nothing to be scared of. She always knew she would end up like this.
Giving her all, to them.
The tears falling from her eyes are irrelevant. The fire is so close, they will vanish anyways.
Zoey really wasn’t that good at anything, just managed to get decent enough. She has already come to terms with that.
But if there was something she prided herself on…
It was their harmony.
For her there was nothing like being by their side. Being together. So if Huntr/x is shattering into pieces, then she will be the glue holding it together.
Because Zoey never felt ashamed of loving them.
Even if she, like everything else she did, became too much, her love being more than what should be normal, she still just hoped she showed it enough.
So Zoey closes her eyes and like that, let’s Gwi-ma enter into what she always found her safe space.
Gwi-ma is in her head. Into her thoughts, her privacy that is no longer just hers.
And like that, Zoey makes a deal with Gwi-ma.
It doesn’t matter what the words were, Zoey doesn't want to think anymore. Not with him inside her head.
The only thing that matters is freeing Rumi and healing Mira.
And so they are.
The ringing in her ears died down, because they stopped fighting. Mira stops bleeding red. The patterns surrounding Rumi shatter until there is none.
In their confusion Mira and Rumi realize her silence.
Their gaze slowly turns to Zoey, not wanting to be met with the truth.
But Zoey smiles anyway, big, shakily. As she laughs when their gazes finally reach her.
“I love you guys, okay? You have to promise to never forget.”
She whispers in a happy tone, tears and tears running down her cheeks, evaporating before they can hit the floor. It burns with every new forming pattern, it hurts, she can’t hold her Shin-kals anymore, the Hoonmoon rejects her as she is now only a mere demon.
Even with Gwi-ma’s laughter too loud into her ear, into her mind, with Rumi cries and Mira loud yells of her name..
….Zoey can only think of when she whispered those same words in a sleepover under blankets and soft giggles.
Her smile grows, her tears can’t fall as they evaporate the moment they start descending.
“...Pinky promise...”
She whispers those silly words the other two had replied with so long ago, to tease her at that time. She wants to drown in it, in the memory. While she closes her eyes as she loses the last bit of her humanity.
She ignores it all, even with the laugh ruining her memories, even with the sound of chaos from the ones she loves most, she selfishly wants a happy memory to be the last thing she thinks of.
And yet... far away, she can still hear the cries of her name that should be next to her instead of sounding so far away.
The flames burn, just as much as the patterns. And Zoey learns to just embrace them.