The telepathy au continues to lengthen! Continuing from @raksha-the-demon’s last rb here
For those just tuning in: Mira got telepathy shortly pre-movie, delayed the “Golden” release… by a night (because they then learned about Rumi’s patterns), and is trying to poke at Jinu and his self-loathing like a particularly interesting bug. The girls are not writing “Takedown,” but have undergone an alternate train scene where Mira was injured and Rumi damaged the Honmoon, before heading to an alternate fansign—where Mira has begun to question if maybe drawing such a sharp line between demons and people is incorrect
"She definitely feels shame," Zoey says, "but so does everyone."
There's a flash of memory from a much younger Zoey at a school cafeteria in America being teased by other students because of how weird her Korean food was to them, followed by Zoey telling her parents she only wants "normal food".
“Yes,” Mira says, before she can realize that was an inside thought, before she can realize she’s answered, every single time Rumi has called herself a mistake suddenly clicking into place.
And then it hits her.
Like a physical blow, it hits her that Rumi is ashamed to exist. That she sees all that she is as being defined by her patterns. That her life has shrunk to—has never been much bigger than—revolving around hiding and fixing and coping with them.
Rumi.
Zoey gasps too, and something thuds on the ceiling, and it’s only a few seconds before footsteps are racing towards them.
The door slams open and Rumi says, “Mira, what the heck was that?”
Mira, disoriented, stares.
“Did I just…” she starts, slowly.
“You just projected a thought,” Zoey agrees. “Loudly.”
They all stare at each other.
“Uh, we were just talking about you,” Mira says, awkwardly gesturing for Rumi to come look at their list.
Rumi approaches, carefully, and speedreads the list—which feels really weird—her fingers curling around the patterns at her throat as she reaches the end.
Of course and Mira can see and I don’t have to say it I can’t not say it they know what I am and she pities me but what don’t I have to be ashamed of?
“Rumi?” Zoey asks. “Wanna share? I’m not in there with you, remember?”
Mira tries not to flinch.
Mira hears the lies come to the front of Rumi's mind almost instantly.
It's nothing I'm just worried about Mira I'm thinking about the Idol Awards I'm fine you don't need to worry.
(It's been frightening to realize just how easily, how naturally, deceit comes to Rumi.)
Mira steels herself for an unpleasant conversation, because Rumi needs to actually face this, and they can't help her if she won't be honest with them.
And then she feels Rumi set the lies aside and pick up the truth instead.
"Of course I'm ashamed. Who wouldn't be ashamed of me?"
"Us," Mira says, and Rumi frowns as her thoughts begin tying themselves up in knots trying to reconcile that statement with the fact that Mira and Zoey know.
"You haven't done anything to be ashamed of," Zoey half-asserts, half-asks. Her thoughts practically beg for Rumi to reveal that she has done something shameful. Please let us both be wrong about this. We'll forgive whatever it was just tell us we're wrong.
"I am a thing to be ashamed of."
Zoey's face falls. "Is that really what you think?"
"Yes?" Rumi looks back and forth between the two of them, confused. "I'm a hunter who has patterns. A mistake."
"You keep saying that," Mira says. "Well, thinking it," she corrects for Zoey's benefit. "Why?"
"Because its true?" Rumi says it like its obvious. When they appear not to get it she adds, "Someone like me isn't supposed to exist."
Zoey says something about how Rumi definitely should exist, and she will happily stab anyone who tells her otherwise.
And then Mira starts seeing flashes of memories.
A young Rumi sitting in the garden with Celine, being taught about demons and patterns for the first time. "You have them by mistake. You're a hunter, not a demon."
A slightly older Rumi, standing in a clothing store eyeing a dress with short sleeves. "We should still get a jacket or something to go with it, so you don't reveal anything by mistake."
A teenaged Rumi, staring at a photo of Mi-Yeong, asking Celine yet again why she would have ever chosen a demon? "She made a mistake, and we just have to live with that."
And Mira can hear the echoes of what past-Rumi was thinking during those moments. She can hear how child logic turned "you have them by mistake" into "having them makes you a mistake." Hears how every interaction that followed got filtered through that lens, until Rumi was certain that Celine only viewed her as the shameful evidence of Mi-Yeong's failures.
The memories culminate with Rumi's most recent phone call with Celine, on the night that should've been the Golden live show. Celine was sympathetic to Rumi's situation, pointing out that everyone has to cancel shows sometimes. But then she dove into the logistics of how to recover from it: when could Rumi be ready for a show, what would they tell the fans, does Rumi need new costuming to hide the patterns? And all of it together left Rumi feeling, yet again, like a burden that Celine was being forced to bear.
Mira's head is too jumbled with other people's thoughts to be able to form words, and she's always preferred action anyway.
She grabs Rumi in a hug and tries not to be the first one to cry.
“You’re not a mistake,” Mira manages, fierce despite the lump in her throat. “And even if you were, we wouldn’t care.”
“You’re Rumi,” Zoey agrees, piling into the hug. “It doesn’t matter how you got here.”
Rumi doesn’t believe them, at first, and then as it shifts into disbelief of the situation, her shoulders begin to shake and she fists her hands in their shirts. No one was ever supposed to understand, supposed to look at her the same once they knew—it’s everything she wanted and everything she never thought she’d get.
That’s what breaks Mira, really. Because she’s been there too.
And Rumi was the first person who saw her—who saw her angry, who saw her weak, who saw her overly honest, who saw every shameful, broken glass part of Mira—and loved her anyway.
She twists a little, pressing her head into Zoey’s, the gross crying already starting, and decides to get her too. “We love you, too, you know? All of it.”
Rumi’s brain lights up, to think about Zoey, doesn’t quite manage to skip the self-hatred step of calling herself a selfish ass who’s too consumed with her patterns to be there for her loved ones before she just starts crying because she loves her.
And with the two of them down, Zoey isn’t far behind, so now they’re all crying and rambling about how they love each other, the usual feedback loop magnified by ten thousand—at least on Mira’s side—and turning them into absolute messes of snot and tears.
As it finally winds down, one thought rings clear out of Rumi’s head: This. This is the song I want to write.
They start work on a new song. It's what Golden was meant to be--the story of their struggles and triumphs--but more honest. More vulnerable. They aren't quite sure if it will be ready by the Idol Awards, but it still feels good to put their hearts into this.
The voice in Rumi's head that calls her a mistake doesn't go away, not yet, but she no longer let's it go by completely unchallenged all the time.
(Mira gets a fuzzy feeling when she realizes that half of the challenges are in her own voice.)
A few days before the Idol Awards Zoey suggests they offer an alliance to Jinu.
"If he really is different than the rest of them, why not give him a chance to prove it? If he's capable of being better then is it really right to trap him to suffer for all eternity?"
So Rumi convinces Jinu to meet again, this time with all three of them.
("How do I know its not an ambush?)
("Why would I warn you if it was?")
("Because you don't want them to hurt me?")
( "Right now I'm the one who most wants to hurt you.")
They explain the plan, as barebones as it is. Jinu sabotages the Saja Boys, the girls bring their A game, the Honmoon gets sealed, and Jinu gets to spend his eternity on this side, away from Gwi-Ma.
He agrees, and Rumi feels….
She isn't sure what she feels. Jinu is a demon, and she still has a reflexive need for demons to all be easily categorized as "bad." But Jinu is offering to do something good. And that's frightening, because if a demon can be even kind-of good then that means the line between them and Rumi keeps getting blurrier and she's not sure how to face that even with Mira and Zoey next to her. But can she really be upset at the idea of someone choosing to do better with their life?
And then Mira uproots all of it with two words:
"He's lying."
This is the point where Mira’s curiosity about and sympathy for Jinu runs out. He’s nothing interesting to her, she realizes, nothing new.
He nods and he frowns and he tells them a sob story about the people he hurt and he thinks, I can use this I can forget I’m an awful person but I can forget. Be free.
She’s been there, heard that. Oh, her father felt so bad every time he lost his temper, and her mother was having to do so much alone before Mira went and added more stress to the pile, and her brother was only ever lashing out because they were hurting him, and not one of them ever changed.
Jinu might be a demon pretty boy, but he’s just the same as any other asshole.
“He’s lying,” she says.
And Rumi, who is boiling with confused fear and frustration and a thread of tentative hope that she’s trying to suppress, looks at her. “He’s lying?”
He’s lying he’s lying he’s bad they’re all bad I need to get rid of them I can’t be bad.
Mira nods. “He’s planning to sabotage us instead. Make it so our performance damages the Honmoon too.”
And Rumi’s emotions go pop.
“He can’t be lying,” she says. Ican’tbebadheunderstandspleaseno. “You—no. Mira, stop giving me that look.”
“I’m just trying to understand,” Mira says carefully, because she knows she’s invading their privacy, she doesn’t need them to tell her, but she can’t control it.
(Hesaidhehears Gwi-Ma’s voice.)
(Rumi doesn’t say it, and Mira tries not to react.)
“Stop!” Rumi snaps, her voice dropping towards a snarl. I’mlike him youcan’tseestoplookingpleaseit’sugly stop.
“Guys,” Zoey says tentatively.
“Don’t.” And now Rumi really is snarling, that broken sound from the train station, waves cutting through the Honmoon. Yougavemefalsehoepallfalsestopit.
Mira stumbles back at they hit her, feeling it like a physical blow. She hears Zoey choke.
Rumi freezes, physically, but—Justlikehimjustlikemejustlikehim.—Mira watches, horrified, as the patterns begin to crawl over her face.
Every single time. It just happens again.
Rumi is nothing new.
Rumi burns.
The patterns sear across her skin, as hot as they've ever been, and she wonders distantly if they'll consume her like a log in a fire, leaving behind nothing but ash.
Mira lunges, terrified, and the world goes pink, and then she’s tumbling forward, still desperately latched onto Rumi, her momentum and disorientation carrying them into a fall.
Pain shoots through her skull as it slams on something hard, and she swears she hears—Celine?
“I ran out of time,” Rumi is saying, her voice cracking through the lines of pain in Mira’s brain, her thoughts begging fix it fix it please I know you’ll fix it you should’ve why didn’t you fix the mistake now. “There’s no denying it. There’s no changing what I am.”
And Celine is thinking, what happened what is she doing why does she look like that what happened to Mira—Mira, dazed, manages a ragged thumbs up—I need to help her keep it from taking her over and it all comes out as: “Rumi, no.”
She doesn’t need to open her eyes to see it: Celine, horrified (does she finally see me?) and Rumi, falling on her knees, sword in hand (what is she doing no no no no).
Mira lurches up—
“I need you to do what you should’ve done a long time ago, before I destroy everything beyond repair,” Rumi says. I can’t be more than this but we can stop it I’m weak help me please.
—and fucking bodies her.
No time for grace. She is getting her away from the sword.
Celine screams her fear for Rumi so loudly Mira almost thinks she did it out loud.
The two of them slam into the ground hard. Mira's head fills with a jumble of thoughts from Celine and Rumi, fear and confusion and pain and shame, so much shame from the both of them. But she shoves all of that away so that she can focus on--there, she sees where Rumi's sword fell from her hand.
Mira rolls off of Rumi so that she can kick the blade further out of reach. It skids across the dirt--Mira belatedly realizes that they're at the sacred tree--before dissipating into the Honmoon. She looks back at Rumi to make sure she hasn't just resummoned it, but Rumi is lying on the ground looking slightly dazed while Celine hovers over her.
Satisfied that Rumi isn't about to try that idiotic stunt again any time soon, Mira lets herself have a moment to calm her racing heart and try to separate her own panicked thoughts from theirs.
--please you have to let me do this i have to fix it--
--protect you i have to protect you you're all that matters--
--going to destroy everything i can't please don't let me--
--faults and fears must never be seen i have to protect you--
"This is a trick," Celine says, her steady voice not betraying any of the emotion Mira knows she's feeling. "An illusion from Gwi-Ma, to make us turn on each other."
please believe me Mira please she's not a demon you don't need to hurt her please believe me
"I already know," Mira says as she hauls herself up to her knees. Rumi does the same, nodding her confirmation to Celine.
"We've known for weeks," Mira adds, hoping it will calm some of Celine's mental panic.
"…You have?"
"You were wrong," Rumi says. "I could always trust them."
Celine's thoughts race in circles, confusion at how Mira could be ok with Rumi's patterns followed by relief, but then fear because something has clearly gone horrifically wrong for Rumi to be here, looking and sounding like this.
"But I ran out of time," Rumi says. "I've become a danger to everything I swore to protect."
--nonononono--
"We can still fix this," Celine says. She hovers a hand by Rumi's cheek, not quite touching the glowing marks there. "We can cover these up and set everything right again. We can fix it."
Rumi bats the hand away. "No you can't! You cant fix this because this is me. Don't you get it?"
--nonono you're not this you're rumi you're my rumi--
--please see me please you can't hate me you can't--
"Could you both just--" Mira tries to interject, but neither of them are hearing her and their thoughts are so loud.
"You're not one of them you're a hunter like your mother was, this is just--"
--you aren't a monster you're my Rumi you're everything please you aren't a monster--
"It's me! It's always been me!"
--why can't you look at me why can't you love me i love you i've never been good enough--
Their emotions flood through Mira like a tidal wave, drowning everything else until she doesn't know her own thoughts anymore. Is that fear of hurting others coming from Rumi, or is that Mira's? Or is it Celine, realizing that she's raised Rumi to hate herself? Whose shame is whose?
Mira hates her patterns she doesn't have patterns she's sorry for how she raised Rumi she's ashamed of how she lost her temper she's scared of what she's going to do she just wants to be accepted she made a promise she loves Rumi--
She grabs that last thought and clutches it tightly. She doesn't know if its her own love she's feeling or Celine's, but it doesn't matter, because it's an emotion that's true for both of them. They love Rumi so much, if she only knew, if she could only feel it, she'd know that Celine never thought of her as a mistake, that Mira and Zoey don't see her as a monster, not even now. If only she could--
--Wait. Could she?
Mira did it once before, on accident. Maybe she can do it on purpose?
Mira takes the love that she's gripped so tightly, and shoves it at Rumi hard as she can.
I love you I love you I love you
Rumi gasps.
Mira feels the wave break—sees it break, glowing bright in the Honmoon around them, not just the familiar blue or glimmers of gold, but bright and iridescent, settling solid around them in a tiny, ferocious circle instead of fading.
And finally, fucking finally, they both stop.
“I love you,” Mira says, out loud. “And I don’t care.”
Rumi stares in wonder, her thoughts finally, beautifully silent.
And then she reaches out, tugging on a thread with one clawed finger. “Oh. There we are.”
The wave breaks again, offering Mira back herself—her, protective and terrified and kind and paranoid and strong and aggressive and understanding and loved, regardless—and again, because Rumi understands.
Celine’s mind rattles, confused, as she fights to breathe. Please please please please. “Rumi?”
“The patterns don’t matter,” Rumi tells her, still studying her hand, watching the glowing thread shift under her fingers—now purple, now brown. I was just like Jinu when I hid I was letting them define me, consume me, not seeing, lying until we all burned—don’t you get it? All I have to do is define them.
No no no don’t give up please can’t you see? Celine is shaking, barely staying on her feet.
And Mira can’t stop herself from letting out a burst of slightly hysterical laughter. “Phrasing, Rumi!”
Rumi frowns, but before she can protest she's interrupted by an insistent buzz from her pocket.
Zoey! they both think at the same time. Rumi yanks her phone out and answers it, and the three of them begin rapidly talking at once.
"I am so so sorry I never should've--"
"Where the hell are you guys what's going on--"
"I didn't have time to explain I had to--"
"--thought it was the only way but I was wrong and--"
"--Honmoon went all weird and--"
"--didn't even know if it would work but I had to--"
"Girls." Celine's voice cuts through the air, and they fall silent. She looks around at the changing threads of the Honmoon, then back at Rumi. "What did you do?"
Rumi takes Mira's hand in hers and squeezes, and Mira squeezes back.
"I think I've finally stopped being ashamed."
The Honmoon's colors continue to shift as she speaks, and so do her patterns, the angry purple giving way to hues that shimmer in the light.
Mira hears Celine's thoughts break.
Is that all you needed? Is that all you ever needed?
“How have I never realized how much of a mess you are?” Mira asks, still filled with the wild mess of relief and adrenaline and lovelovelove pulsing through her.
There’s so much that makes sense now, hearing-feeling all of the fear and love waging war across her mind, understanding that as cool and steady and strong as Celine has always been, this is her too. And she’s been trying so hard.
And yes, there’s so much that could’ve been avoided if she’d known, if she’d trusted, but—
“That’s not the point,” she says, and she can feel it thrumming, right on the tip of her tongue, the song they’ve been struggling with, ready to become.
“Is Mira doing her psychic voodoo thing?” Zoey asks.
Rumi laughs a little, smiling at Celine, soft and open and forgiving. “I think Celine’s being mean to herself.”
“Mean?” Celine echoes—it’s an incredibly Celine move, raised eyebrows and all, but the tears burst free as she says it, dripping down her face as her knees finally give way.
Rumi rushes to hold her, dropping her phone as she does, mirror of their earlier position, her hands on Celine’s face as she tries to comfort her, as they try to comfort each other.
Mira picks the phone up out of the dirt, turns off speaker. “Hey, Zoey.”
“You’re okay?” Zoey asks frantically.
“We’re okay,” Mira says. “I think—I think Celine’s gonna be attending the Idol Awards this year.”
There’s a long silence, and from this distance, in the most metaphorical of ways, Mira can hear the gears whirling in Zoey’s mind as she works through exactly what would get Celine to show up to an event she loathes.
Eventually, mischievous, delighted, Mira’s favorite partner in crime, she asks, “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Mira says.
//
They show it to Zoey, their brilliant little Honmoon, their song of acceptance and connection, hold her hands tightly and sing her into it, just where she belongs—their Zoey, clever with her words and brilliant with problems and smiling brighter than the sun, and every tryhard, avoidant, socially inept part of her too—until she figures it out.
Being Zoey, of course, it comes out with “Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?”
“Wait,” Mira starts, grinning.
“Right after the first verse?” Rumi finishes.
It keeps feeling like that—right beyond their fingertips, found as soon as they reach. Even if the sound guys probably want them dead when they get the news they’re changing the song just the day before the show, it’s a feeling Mira hasn’t felt since the first home she summoned her gokdo, and she knows.
The day of, Rumi steps out of her dressing room, jacket in hand, and looks at them. “Do you think…?”
“Yeah,” Zoey says, breathless.
Mira nods. “We think.”
She feels it run through everyone’s minds as they see her, and Mira is so, so glad that Rumi isn’t the one stuck with this part, whether it’s what the hell or gross or hot damn or—
There’s my girls, Bobby thinks, same as ever, and Mira wants to sink into his mind and never let go.
“The Saja Boys are gonna try something,” she mutters, after they pass each other in the hall. She can hear it, the whispered discontent, their questions, the crab-in-a-bucket urge to drag Rumi down somehow.
“Let them,” Zoey says, before the words can get out of Rumi’s mouth.
None of them startle when Bobby races back in, telling them the Saja Boys are fighting and they have to go on first. The fear is there, the anger, the guilt, whatever. All of it has its place in her.
She stands in the wings, looking across her girls, and she feels the crowd, its mass of confusion and excitement and boredom and—there. Celine. Mind at attention like an old soldier.
Rumi’s voice breaks the silence as the curtain rises, acapella—“Nothing but the truth now, Nothing but the proof of what I am”—and, well.
They sing.
They’re halfway through the second chorus when Abby rushes the stage, clad in some kind of glam jeoseung saja, hanbok-and-gat look. He’s enraged. He was the crab-bucket mind, Mira realizes, seeing something beautiful and changing and understanding it but hating it for that beauty.
He’s dust almost before she realizes what she’s doing.
She doesn’t regret it.
Mystery is only a beat behind, charging out the other wing, certain in his selfish nihilism. It’s their death at his hands or his death at Gwi-Ma’s, and he’s a monster either way.
Zoey doesn’t regret it.
She sees Romance grab Baby by the arm, run. They don’t matter.
But Jinu—
“Get up and let the jagged edges meet the light instead!”
—he stumbles out onto the stage, wide-eyed, and falls to his knees, scrabbling at his robe. Rumi holds her sword to his throat, waiting, contemplative, so stupidly hopeful.
But she’s right.
“This is what it sounds like!”
Jinu strips off his robe, his un-mic-ed voice barely audible beneath theirs as he decides to join the Honmoon, chooses to do something good and selfless and hopeful for once in his life because he understands that he can, and a soul glows through the fabric of his stupid fucking mesh crop top.
Rumi drops her sword and yanks him to his feet, embracing him tightly as his patterns, like hers, shift until they glow.
“This is what it sounds like!”
She lets him go, smiling, lighter than Mira has ever seen, and then the audience is singing along to the last beats of the song, and the three of them are hugging, and the Honmoon is remade around them and—
The world goes quiet.
Mira knows everything she needs to, just like this.
