Bringing To You One Gay at a Time

[past]

(And like I get that tonally, the movie as is can't really support addressing the hundreds/thousands of dead people but like... *why did you have your main love interest kill hundreds/thousands of people if you weren't actually going to do anything with it*)

And like, the movie explicitly states that missing persons have doubled or tripled during the time the Saja Boys were active.

And that's before an entire train of people "go missing"

And those people are still going to be missing after the movie.

And I can't imagine that Rumi's feelings towards Jinu are going to be any kind of simple once she's removed from the immediate emergency of imminent demon invasion and has to see grieving families on the news and on social media and the vigils for the victims and the inevitable conspiracy theories about the government/foreigners trafficking people

One part of her wanting Jinu back and another part, seeing a mother passing out flyers about her missing children (they were on the subway heading to school, please, her son had a Huntr/x hoodie), wondering if he deserves another shot at life

Like- I imagine every generation of Hunters has had...unfortunate incidents. Ones that resulted in human lives being lost; a demon slipped past defenses, a breach they couldn't get to in time, a rare instance of being caught alone and injured too badly to do anything but watch as the soul is pulled from a body and a Person becomes a casualty in a generations-long war.

Because that's what it is, war, and loss of life is an unfortunate inevitability.

But those moments of failure...they happen early. When Hunters are young and inexperienced, and when they have yet to learn how to anticipate their soul mates' thoughts before they even solidify.

It doesn't happen to a trio at the top of their game.

And Rumi knows this; Mira and Zoey too. No amount of rationalizing or justifying or desperately grasping at any gossamer excuse their groping fingers find can change the fact that this shouldn't have happened.

There shouldn't be a young widower on the news begging for leads on his wife with a wailing baby on his lap.

There shouldn't be a memorial with teddy bears and balloons and smiling photographs at the train station.

There shouldn't be posts on Instagram about a vigil or a GoFundMe or a memorial for a father or sibling or friend that vanished without a trace.

There shouldn't be any of this.

But there is.

It's a pall over the comeback preparations.

Celine- Celine is upset. Disappointed. Angry, as she always is at demons. But she still tries to dull the edges of the hurt; she lost souls, too, when she was young and grieving and struggling with her finances and trying to figure out how to keep a baby alive.

But they all know it isn't the same.

Celine was alone. One person trying to do the job of three. More, when they consider what was waiting for her at home and the office. They...were not.

When Rumi finds herself thinking about Jinu and how she wants him back, it's always with guilt. What right does he have, to a second chance at life when he robbed so many people of their only shot?

Celine might have had to deal with it towards the end of her tenure as an active hunter, but Huntr/x are the ones who really grew up with social media and a 24/7 hr news cycle. So Celine insulates herself from the worst of it while Huntr/x, by virtue of growing up with social media and also needing to have a media presence, have to be in the middle of it.

The older generations didn't really have to deal with grieving families being able to broadcast their grief and their pleas for help right in front of their faces. Sure, they might have run into a family looking for a missing person or seen a poster for a missing person, but the grieving family couldn't reach through their phone and grab them by the neck.

(If the girls wanted, they could spend the entire day cyberstalking the grieving families)

(If they gave into the urge, they could find out everything about the victims) (there were fathers and mothers on that train. There were great-grandparents entering their 90th decade of life and infants less than a year old on that train) (they know this; to find out more would simply be an act of self-flagellation)

The fact that you mentioned that it was dangerous for them (Miyeong and Seoyi) to hunt together with Celine because she was so used to fighting alone

Celine takes in Mira and raises her(?)

Miyeong encouraging Rumi to hide her patterns from Celine

They're just so delicious for their angst potential. Imagine they're all hunting together, maybe in the earliest days of Celine's time travel, when things are obvious, but they haven't yet seen just what it could lead to. So they're hunting together as usual. They've done it hundreds of times before, they trust each other with their lives and they know each other like the back of their hands. So how the hell did Celine end up with one of Miyeong's arrows in her shoulder? (I subscribe to the archer Miyeong belief lol, sorry if i've missed your own hc for her weapon).

And how the hell does she keep fighting? It's as if the pressure and slight destabilization of getting shot is the most annoying part for Celine because she doesn't stop. Seoyi is yelling, Miyeong is pale as a ghost, both only still fighting on instinct and years of training conditioned into them, but Celine never stopped (How many close calls and life-threatening injuries do you think she's had to simply push through while hunting all alone?).

It is a conversation and a half that they have afterwards. Correction. they try to have afterwards. Celine is uncharacteristically dismissive and standoffish. She fights them when they try to help her with the injury, and she brushes their concerns about her off. Not in her ususal "I'll be fine, I can do it myself" way. This time it's "I am fine, I want to do it myself". They'd have almost thought she was angry with them for the incident, if it weren't for the constant string of apologies. "I'm sorry for getting in the way, I'm sorry for pushing further into the fray than I should've. I'm sorry I forgot your reach, Miyeong." And It just didn't make sense.

Do they stop hunting together, or do they re-learn how to fight together? Do Seoyi and Miyeong mourn the connection they never even felt break until it was simply gone?

Then we have the Mira situation. That one is especially delicious when you add in Rumi coming back in time as well.

Let's say somehow, someway, Rumi can't just go to Celine immediately (for plot reasons).

So she is stuck on Jeju, explaining to a mother she doesn't know what's happened, why she needs to see Celine all of this fun stuff. Miyeong is very concerned and she is also slowly piecing things together, but keeping her suspicions to herself until she's sure.

Fast forward a few hours. It's no longer the middle of the night and Mira and Zoey are also there and awake.

They go through the explanation again, a bit calmer this time but all Rumi can focus on is how this younger Mira frowns and this Zoey keeps sending concerned glances younger Mira's way.

"Celine raised you?" She'll ask at one point. Rumi will just nod, so familiar with how Mira expresses herself and what her tells are. Even if this Mira's tells and expressions are wrong and familiar at the same fucking time.

"And I was brought in when I was a teen?" Rumi will nod again and this Mira will frown and there'll be something nagging in so hard in the back of Rumi's mind, but she just can't figure out what it is. r

"I was stuck with them for years more in your world." This Mira will mumble, more to herself than anything else, and she'll lean back slightly and cross her arms in thought familiar

"You were brought in earlier here?" She'll ask this other version of Mira, and things will slowly agonizingly start clicking into place.

"Yeah. I ran away from home. I was probably eight? Anyways-"

"I ran away from home when I was younger. Didn't do much more than piss my parents off when one of their people finally managed to drag me back."

"I ran into Celine, and the rest is history, or something like that." And Rumi will feel like her head is underwater, even as Zoey seems to grown lighter and gently elbows this Mira in the ribs.

"Yeah right! She tried to drop you off here, but you just kept going back to her!" And Mira will glare back at Zoey in that way that is familiarfamiliarfamiliar not a glare at all

"The first adult I felt safe with ended up being the one I wanted to stay with? What a shocker." She tilts her head and knits her hands together in front of her, completely relaxed even if her words are dripping with sarcasm.

It's the nail in the coffin.

All of those little habits and expressions Rumi recognizes are all habits she herself has. Because she picked them up from Celine. The reason that this Mira's way of expressing herself is wrong is because it isn't Mira, but it's still familiar, because it is Rumi and Celine.

Oh and this same revelation happens for Miyeong as well. She sees so many of those little ticks in future Rumi.

And the fucking patterns oh my god.

Children wearing long sleeves is nothing unusual at all, and it's not like Celine sticks around enough for her to truly be able to say that Rumi's wardrobe ever has any drastic changes.

Or at least she shouldn't be able to.

Rumi and Miyeong are so careful. But Celine had been in Miyeongs shoes regarding this. She knows- she knows immediately.

At first she might not be able to tell if Miyeong is making the same mistakes Celine did, or if it's something else. Maybe she'll encurage Rumi to be herself and be open. Maybe she sticks around as a concerned shadow, trying to make just figure out what's going on.

If she ever finds out what exactly the secrecy is for oh boy. I don't think she'd be angry.

I think she'd accept it with the same quiet resignation as she had when she quietly left the other two and took on everything on her own. She wouldn't shout, wouldn't scream. She'd just take the cards she'd been dealt and try to make it a winning hand, hiding her pain behind a practiced poker face.

It's not like she doesn't understand MIyeong's hesitance. She understands both from Miyeong's point of view, but she also has her own context. Celine knows she hurt Rumi. Severely. Maybe she's even secretly glad that Miyeong had the insight to be able to tell that she might to it again. Maybe she is glad that Rumi isn't as close to her as she could be. It means Celine doesn't have the opportunity of hurting her.

Anyways-

Just really liked the time travel au lol

Anon I love you. I want you to know that I started posts in my drafts addressing allllll of this.

And of course, I latched particularly onto the whole Celine-Mira thing.

It's a small thing. Rumi knows this.

Rumi knows this.

And it's stupid.

Who in their right mind feels this way about the way someone chops vegetables?

But here she is, in Mi-yeong's her mother's kitchen, helping prep for dinner, and all she can do is stand there and burn rice while she watches Mira chop a carrot.

It's the way Celine taught her to use a knife.

She remembers the day she taught her; gray autumn sky drizzling rain against the windowpanes, the television murmuring from the den (there was a marathon of Celine's favorite K-drama on that day, and it was religion for her to have the improbably happenings play out in the background whenever such an occurrence graced the airwaves), and Celine's hands, calloused but soft as a song guiding her own. "Like this," she'd murmured, methodically moving Rumi's hands. "Keep things fingers out of the way...hold it like so...no, it's not a saw, just go-"

chwik!

-and it went clean through the carrot.

"Just like that," Celine had smiled and rubbed her shoulder approvingly. "Good job, my little sous chef."

It wasn't a big memory, but it was a good one; a cozy one; one she'd take out and caress like a favorite childhood stuffie every now and again.

And now...it was Mira's.

It was Mira standing there in the kitchen, with the K-drama in the background (because Celine would like that show), Celine's hands guiding hers and smiling down at her little sous chef.

Not her.

Ichor trickled through her, tar and pitch and every dark, black thing in the world. She felt it writhe and hiss through her patterns, burning with the steam of something rotting away. It was demonic, that feeling, and she hated it and knew it was wrong and hated it this was Mira she loved Mira, but it was there.

The envy.

"Ooh, careful baby." She blinked, and Mi-yeong Eomma was beside her, gently shooing her away from the stove and moving the pot off the stove as it boiled over. Mira looked up and smirked.

"So, in this other timeline, do you not cook?"

And if this was her Mira, or maybe the proper version of Rumi for this world, she'd tease right back, remind her who had been responsible for ruining their small frying pan.

But it wasn't. She wasn't.

So she said nothing, just leaned back against the sink with folded arms and glared at the floor.

"She's had a long day, Mira," Mi-yeong Eomma chided, running an affectionate hand over Rumi's hair (wrong wrong wrong; this wasn't how Celine did it) before pulling her into a sideways hug (wrong wrong wrong). "I'm sure we'd all be hopeless in the kitchen if the tables were turned."

Mira said something back to the effect that Zoey wouldn't since she'd just nuke everything, and laughter rippled alongside Zoey's indignant assertion to the miracles wrought by microwaves, but Rumi didn't hear.

She grew up with her mother, and Mira with Celine; there had been no grief, and Mira hadn't grown up with people who didn't love her.

She should be happy.

She should.

But there was only the ichor, and the envy.

Mira noticed. They all did.

It might not be their Rumi, but she was still Rumi.

So of course they noticed the way her eyes would linger on Mira's every move. How her gaze would sharpen and how her hackles would raise from something as simply as a tilted head.

It was undivided. Not Miyeong or Zoey got the same treatment. Just her. Just Mira struggling under the weight of a look she couldn't discern the meaning behind.

She knew the predatory looks of the business men Eomma was constantly surrounded by.

She knew the calculative ones she'd level the sharks with in return.

The look that said she knew something they didn't. She wore that one often, just never vindictively around her or the other hunters.

Not Zoey, not Miyeong, not Seoyi and certainly not Rumi had ever even come close to any of those looks.

Any other time -any other Rumi- and Mira would welcome the attention with open arms. But this wasn't any other time, any other Rumi. And this wasn't just attention. It was a dissection.

She was being scrutinized- judged- by someone who didn't seem to know her at all.

Mira knew people, she read them like books.

But she couldn't for the life of her figure out what caused the vitriol that warred with the shame behind this Rumi's eyes.

Live image of Celine when she walks into this mess after it all blows up:

-Rumi sees Celine, her Celine, alive and throws herself into her arms, bawling her eyes out.

-Celine automatically folds Rumi into the hug, arms still remembering the exact way she likes to be held, and when she realizes that it's her Rumi she breaks.

-And they stand there, relief washing over them like summer rain, reveling in the familiarity of each other even as they grieve at those parts Time has changed.

-It hurts, those changes; Celine's Rumi went through so much grief, so much pain; Rumi can see the anguish etched on Celine's face; but in that moment it doesn't matter.

-Celine's here; Rumi's here; and this world they've found themselves in feels...a little more like home.

-Across the room, Mira watches, and feels a knife lodge in her chest.

-For years Mira thought Eomma- Celine- loved her like a daughter. No, not think; she knew she had, Eomma had told her so.

-But now, watching her mother sob over this Rumi from another plane- her plane apparently- she wonders:

-Was she only ever just a replacement?

-On the opposite side of the room, Mi feels her heart stutter even as a corner of it warms to see Celine happy.

-She loves Rumi. More than life itself. She would die for her baby (and apparently on another plane had).

-Yet watching Rumi and Celine...watching her shower Celine with the love a child saves for their mother, she can't help but grieve.

[past]

[past]

at one point, the triplets and the littles realize that they’re both in the middle of creating new albums, and that those albums will likely be released around the same time as one another. despite it not being a great sales move (who cares, they have a bunch of money anyways), they convince their label to allow them to release them on the same day as a cute gimmick because of them being siblings.

(this works, of course, because almost all of the people in charge are their family members who adore them.)

secretly, though, the two groups are plotting to fuck with one another a little bit.

you see, the triplets’ album covers tend to be very sci-fi, futuristic themed, while the littles’ album covers are all just photos of the two of them, with the catch being that those photos are recreations of childhood photos of the two of them.

for these upcoming albums, the triplets decide to have their album cover be a recreation of a childhood photo of the three of them, while the littles make theirs sci-fi and futuristic.

neither group knows the other is planning this, however, so when both albums come out on the same day as was planned, and they both realize they had the same idea.

what makes it especially insane is that their parents were definitely aware of this fact. they all visited during the shoots for these cover. and yet they said nothing about it.

when asked why, huntr/x’s responses basically just boil down to “it seemed funny”.

(a month later, huntr/x releases a surprise album with an a side and a b side, with the a side’s cover being a recreation of a photo of them from their training days, and the b side’s being a sci-fi futuristic themed photo.

at one point, the triplets and the littles realize that they’re both in the middle of creating new albums, and that those albums will likely be released around the same time as one another. despite it not being a great sales move (who cares, they have a bunch of money anyways), they convince their label to allow them to release them on the same day as a cute gimmick because of them being siblings.

(this works, of course, because almost all of the people in charge are their family members who adore them.)

secretly, though, the two groups are plotting to fuck with one another a little bit.

you see, the triplets’ album covers tend to be very sci-fi, futuristic themed, while the littles’ album covers are all just photos of the two of them, with the catch being that those photos are recreations of childhood photos of the two of them.

for these upcoming albums, the triplets decide to have their album cover be a recreation of a childhood photo of the three of them, while the littles make theirs sci-fi and futuristic.

neither group knows the other is planning this, however, so when both albums come out on the same day as was planned, and they both realize they had the same idea.

what makes it especially insane is that their parents were definitely aware of this fact. they all visited during the shoots for these cover. and yet they said nothing about it.

when asked why, huntr/x’s responses basically just boil down to “it seemed funny”.

(a month later, huntr/x releases a surprise album with an a side and a b side, with the a side’s cover being a recreation of a photo of them from their training days, and the b side’s being a sci-fi futuristic themed photo.

[past]

[past]

Omegaverse Zoey vs SOCMED AU Zoey

Perfection. Omegaverse Zoey you are such a soft wet cat and Socmed Zoey you are such a keeper of soft wet cats (and dogs).

[past]