❤️🤍 Gunner Polytrix 🩷💜🩵

Oh evil evil anon. Yes >:3

One of the few things Rumi had ever seen Celine squeamish about was when a squirrel had gotten trapped in the crawlspace below the angeori—they’d gone to investigate the scratching below the floor and, eventually, Celine had just sent Rumi in with a flashlight to figure it out. The squirrel had freaked out enough to run straight over Rumi’s shoulder on its way out.

She wonders, as she hears some animal crying below the floors, if Celine had picked that up from her mentors.

And Rumi—this is her home, even this older version. Why would she think to ask permission to move in it?

The crawlspace is still sealed as far as she can tell, no gaps big enough for—what is that, a fox? Anything, really, but definitely not a fox to get in. Something tugs at her gut and she finds herself turning to the cellar doors, embedded flat in the ground beside her.

She undoes the bolt, its movement smoother than she’d expected, and swings open the door. The crying gets louder and it sounds—it sounds more human.

Rumi swallows, and heads down.

She’s at the foot of the stairs, can see how oddly clean the cellar is in this past, and—and this giant metal door set in the wall, like something out of a horror movie, when a shadow passes over the light, and someone at the top curses.

Without the maze of dust-blanketed boxes that crowd the space in her time, Rumi reaches the door- iron-banded, with a bolt thrown implacably across the front that's as wide as her arm- easily.

Was this door here in her time?

Whatever was behind the door had clearly heard her, because the crying, some mix of a yelping fox and wailing child, intensified and was given an extra poignancy by the muted sounds of nails- claws?- scrabbling against stone, like whatever was in there was desperate to get out.

Something tugs at her chest, and she lifts a hand to the bolt, the metal ice biting at her skin.

"Rumi, wait."

The other person, the one she'd forgotten about as the door and whatever was trapped behind it consumed her attention, laid a hand on her shoulder. She whipped around; one of the old (or well, now middle-aged) Hunters, a woman with merry crow's feet around her eyes who hadn't stopped bringing them platters of food, was standing there. The dim lighting of the cellar kept half her face hidden from Rumi's view.

There was a flash of white as she smiled; the crying stopped with a choking sound. "Mira and Zoey are up in the archives with the others trying to figure out what happened; why don't you join them? I'm sure you'd be a big help."

She probably would; she knew the archives almost as well as Celine, and they hadn't changed in centuries. But she doesn't lift her hand from the latch. "I think there's something stuck in there."

"Yes." The smile stayed in place, but she couldn't see the crow's feet for the shadows. "That's a pretty common occurrence here. We're so close to the woods, you know?"

She can feel the older woman's hand traveling, snaking down her arm to where her own hand rests on the bolt; calloused fingers start plucking and prying at her own. "You're our guest; wouldn't want you to have to deal with the more...unpleasant parts of our job."

Rumi stiffened, firming her grip. Beneath the Hunter's words, she had heard shuffling from behind the door, and the heavy scraping of metal.

She didn't know what was behind there, but it was no wayward woodland creature.

The Hunter's smile vanished as she pressed her lips in a line. "Well, you are a Hunter; you may find yourself in this position someday. Best prepare you in case the Honmoon continues to be ornery." She dropped the hand and waved permission Rumi had no intention to wait for.

The bolt slid easily, the door groaned open, and-

-And Rumi's hand fell limp to her side.

It was a girl. A gumiho girl who looked alarmingly like a child version of-

…okay what if the older Hunter is trying to keep Rumi from getting in the room because she expects Rumi to do what Hunters do and kill the demon?

She’s not so much older, really, in this time; Rumi and her girls have years of experience under their belts. They’re on the edge of turning the Honmoon gold when we meet them, their own next generation has probably already been born

And this is, in her eyes, a bit of a mad act of weakness and mercy and desperation, because the answer should still be to kill the demon but it is a child it is a Hunter

(And if it worked then no one should have ever had to find out. Their faults and fears must never be seen.)

And the mentor is holding her, almost protective, and says, "there's other hunters visiting. I need you to be on your best behavior, okay? Can you be good for me?"

And Rumi can barely see the small nod but then the mentor is telling Celine to go back into the room so the mentor and Rumi can talk. And Celine does.

The door swings closed and is latched again.

So as Rumi manages a strangled, “Starved?” (They are starving Celine they had starved Celine Celine always hated the cellar Celine was so so so small) she has no reason to think this Hunter would have any identification with the demon

“Soon,” she promises, seeing the shock and horror and anger and bracing herself to protect the gumiho.

“You’re starving her?” Rumi repeats, a broken record. “That—that was Celine. And you’re—“

(Celine Celine Celine that’s Celine Celine is-was a demon too Celine Celine Celine they are starving her and telling her to behave and locking her in the dark and saying she is a good girl and this happened to-is happening to Celine)

The mentor realizes, very suddenly, that this works. That Rumi knows who Celine is and is finding out right now that she was once a gumiho. And she tries to put her joy aside to sympathize.

“It must be hard to see her this way,” she says, all gentle. “She was your mentor?”

“she tries to put her joy aside” STOPPP

this probably makes things a billion times worse now so whatever sympathy the mentor could have had and whatever tiny small doubts she had about doing this to Celine is now COMPLETELY GONE

(never mother, like that question had been trained/cowed out of the press before she was old enough to remember)

The mentor softens her face with sympathy and hums, but Rumi can see the smile in her eyes. "I know it's hard to see someone who's such an important part of your life suffer, but it won't last. She's doing so well."

The gumiho child- Celine- flashes back to Rumi's mind's eye, snagging on how loose her dingy shift hung over her frame, how pale her complexion was, how...scared she looked as she watched the door shut out the few meager strands of light that found their way to this forsaken corner of the cellar.

This is your idea of 'well?' She wants to shout, but the mentor's not finished.

"And you know she leads a good life once she's human, so it all works out for the best."

She remembers seeing Celine come up from the rare trip to the cellar, pale and shuddering in a way she never was after a demon battle.

She remembers watching Celine's plate during meals and noticing just how little she ate, and how she was hardly able to bring herself to eat more no matter how Rumi pressed.

And the way she always looked after the foxes in the woods around the hanok, the grief that shrouded her sitting somehow heavier...did her soul remember what she'd lost, even if the rest of her had forgotten?

The mentor's trying to usher her back upstairs, prattling on about how she almost never cries anymore (!!!) and today was just a little setback, she's becoming such a good and quiet little girl, and it's such a relief to know this little...experiment of theirs- taking a demon and making a Hunter out of it- was ultimately a success; their own mentor had her doubts.

"How long?" Rumi braces against the mentor's leading arm, refusing to budge from the door. "How long has she been in there?"

The mentor looks...proud. "We just marked fifty days; a few more months and she'll-"

"She hasn't eaten in over a month?!?" Rumi feels like her own stomach has been gutted.

The mentor, for the first time, looks taken aback. But she recovers just as quickly, all smiles and cheap sympathy. "Yes, and it's quite a credit to her fortitude that she hasn't; gumiho can be voracious beasts. She'll be a stellar Hunter. But of course-" she chuckles, like her and Rumi are in on a private joke. "-you knew that already."

A month in this dark, dank cellar, starving...feeling a part of her soul shriveling and dying in her chest...alone.

And Rumi makes up her mind right then and there.

The old hunter was right, in a sense.

Celine becomes a great hunter. Celine is hardworking, passionate, dedicated, and caring. She takes in an orphaned, half-demon infant despite everything that would entail. She brings in a young, angry teenager and endures the difficulties that are Mira's parents. She provides a calm, stable home for Zoey, who's parents were only together out of habit and the cost it took to divorce.

Who knew what would happen if she took Celine from this?

A hunter must be willing to sacrifice, Celine had said once.

Rumi knew that if she asked Celine -- her Celine -- she would sigh and tell her that obviously leaving her in the cellar would be regrettable.

But, Celine would say. The world and the honmoon was more important than a few months of suffering. And didn't things turn out?

Breathing through her nose, Rumi nods along with whatever the old hunter was saying.

She follows the hunter up the stairs and slings her arms around Mira and Zoey.

And yes, a Hunter must be willing to sacrifice—sacrifice their comfort on their principles. Sacrifice of themself, not others. A child should not be starved for the fact that it might have been what made her kind.

Doubts and all, there is no world where Rumi does not listen to Celine, who taught her to take the risk—who took Zoey, as much as she flinched from conflict, and gave her a future as a warrior; who took Mira, as angry and difficult as everyone warned her she would be, and refused to treat her like a problem to be solved; and who took Rumi and believed in her humanity.

There is no world where she does not take her girls outside, away from the older Hunters’ ears, and say, “So we have to incapacitate them. Fast. Has duct tape been invented yet?”

“I know way too many knots to worry about that,” Zoey says brightly, followed shortly by:

“Uh, what the hell?”

Not that Mira’s not on board, the look in Rumi’s eyes is too serious, she’d just like some context.

Rumi swallows, sets her jaw.

Zoey groans. “Demon imposters?”

She shakes her head, feeling a little sick. “I—in the cellar. They have Celine locked in there. It’s. Bad.”