#tmbt

A distant far-flung memory, many lifetimes ago of hunger was bad enough. 

But forgetting his music was worse. because he still had the capacity to recognize it was gone. It was one of the few things keeping him sane - repeating over and over again those familiar rhymes and melodies, whispering out the lyrics to an empty audience of fog when he could get his tongue to work. He didn't even notice, not at first. The longer he travelled, the more and more disjointed the lyrics became - the way his songs turned to nonsense, just mumbled gibberish. He tripped over a word and the flow of his melody stuttering causing him to fall silent.

He paused, trying to work out why it didn't feel right. 

He tried again -Rhym schemes failed, rhythms crumbled. Again - He tried to tap his fingers together to keep cadence, to keep a beat.

1234 Pray for me now

1234 Pray for me now

He couldn't work out the next line, so he restarted. 

1..2.  Pray....for.......me....He swallowed, restarted his count. 

12...3......4. Again. Again. AGAIN. AGAIN. 

The words didn't fall where he needed them to, the flow destroyed. He physically couldn't maintain the cadence. Words and lyrics and instrumentals that were second nature failed him - even the language he'd written them in became foreign, a mess of floating letters and symbols unknown scripture. He growled in frustration, trying to work out how all of fit together, but it was a complicated puzzle that he couldn't untangle. 

Nothing sounded right anymore. 

Will you halt this eclipse in me? 

-------

Twelve hours.

Nobody had spoken a word for the last two. Abby, Romance and Mira sat the kitchen island, idly shuffling around on the game they were playing but not really playing to win. Mystery was curled up in Zoey's lap, Baby reclined against her opposite shoulder on the sofa. A tv played softly in the background, but nobody was paying attention. It had been almost three months since the demons had arrived - only now had they began to form working relationships with each other. But it would have to suffice. Hopefully it's enough. 

Each person, both hunter and demon, were buried in their own minds, working through a world of possible outcomes. Rumi stood at the windows, watching the sun began its descent towards the horizon. Orange and red light bounced off the glistening towers of glass that made up the Seoul skyline, a massive jaw with glittering diamonds for teeth, ready to devour the sun and plunge the world into dark.

Twelve hours until they ventured into the sea of fog. Twelve hours until they attempted to rescue a man that had betrayed them all. 

She sighed, the ball of anxiety heavy in her chest. What she was asking of them was an impossible ask. It wasn't fair. There was no guarantee they were even going to be successful - they could all end up broken husks, lost to wander forever in a colorless ocean of mist. Rumi glanced at the reflections of her pack in the windows -they would have to rely on each other more than they ever had - testing bonds, testing wills, testing loyalties. Because there were only two possible outcomes if they entered the void. They all emerged intact. Or they were all lost. 

Because there was no middle ground.

It was all or nothing. 

Overwhelming victory, with trumpets calls announcing their return. Or a crushing defeat with no survivors, with no one even left to even write their names on tombstones.

Twelve Hours. 

She felt something brush her hand - Derpy was standing at her side, looking at her with the closet thing he could manage to concern. He pushed under hand, and she let her nails scratch at his ears. She smiled - but it was sad, almost defeated already. "We're...we're gonna get Jinu back." She told him, but her voice lacked confidence. Even to her own ears it sounded hollow. 

She stepped away from the glass and walked towards the elevator to the roof. The eyes of her pack followed her but didn't say a word. She needed an outside perspective - everyone in the penthouse was too close to the situation. 

Rumi pulled her braid over her shoulder, idly picking a couple of strands loose from the tight weave. She needed an objective opinion. 

She closed her eyes, envisioning the clearing in the middle of the Hunter's compound. The one with a dominated by a large tree, with ribbons dangling from its branches. It had been too long since she had visited her mother. Without a word, she phased away, reforming in the cool autumn air, the afternoon light still bright. Rumi's eyes clouded, as she stood in the middle of the clearing, unable to get her legs to carry her forward towards the tombstone. 

"Hi, Mom." she whispered, tears stinging at her eyes. "It's...It's been a while." She wiped her eyes and sniffled. She didn't have many memories of her mother. Rumi hadn't been more than two years old when Mi-Yeong had passed, much too young to form anything of substance. Rumi leaned over and her hands pulled at the few weeds and bits of leaflitter that dotted the gravesite, keeping it clean. After she was satisfied with the state of it, she lit the incense and let the soft smoke with its warms scent curl around her. "I really need to talk to you." 

I wish you were here. 

While Celine struggled to fill the role of mother, she'd done her best, all the while dealing with her own grief at Mi-yeong's passing. Celine was always cold, detached, keeping her at arm's length and mostly caring for Rumi out of obligation opposed to love. I really wish you were here. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and finally stepped forward to kneel for her mother's shrine. 

"You fell in love with a demon, right?" Rumi whispered, only the wind left to carry her words. "What would you do?" Brave. Kind. Stubborn. All words Celine had used to describe in the few times she talked about Mi-Yeong. Singing the highest of praises. 

Rumi swallowed, the memory of kneeling before the elder hunter and offering her a blade surfaced again. Her breath was tight in her throat, sharp almost like the sword she had wished Celine had felled her with in a suicidal spiral. But even Celine couldn't kill the demon she'd become. And even now, Celine couldn't accept that was what she was - part-demon. 

There, kneeling before her mother's grave, Rumi's resolve built. She would not be like Celine - a cold, calculating and unforgiving hunter that only saw the world in black and white.

She would be like her mother - brave, willing to forgive. She would not forget, but forgiveness was a thing to be earned. And she was willing to give Jinu that chance. A step she would also have to take. Kind -she wouldn't let him be consumed by the fog, in a fate crueler than death. Stubborn - they were going to get him back. 

----

His vision faded next. 

And it didn't fade all at once. It started with the small details.

The crowded streets of -----, the very city he'd been raised in. The towering palace that dominated the skyline, it began to dissolve into black, shadows creeping out to devour the details. The colors of the shingles, the textures of the tiles. He replaced them with others, but none of it was right. He was trying to fill in the details, a tiny paintbrush on his hand. But his hands shook, fudging the details, bits of paint stuck to his fingers. 

But even a tiny detail brush wasn't going to cover it. Soon enough, he was painting in entire landscapes with broad strokes, the originals long forgotten. Trying to maintain some semblance of what was. A throne of blackened stone, a crimson king that tormented him. Was it crimson? No, no it wasn't. It was swallowed by grey before too long anyway, the colors muddied from his frantic attempts to maintain it. 

It wasn't just relegated to locations. People that had meant so much to him, that would live and die for him - had died for him - their faces were nothing more than grey blobs, no discernable features. Empty eyes stared back, devoid of color. 

He couldn't remember what they looked like. 

What it was like to feel. 

Pain.

The agony from his fall. The carefully curated, blissfully controlled chaos from his packmates from biting teeth to scratching claws raking down his skin. The pain he caused, the agent of wrath that he was and was capable of. Flesh splitting under his claws, blood soaking his clothes as he ripped through a demon horde. A column of fire consuming all that he was. 

Softness.

Cradling a hunter's face in his hands, whose name he couldn't remember. Whose face was lost to him. Soft fur under his fingers, the sensation tickling at his face. He couldn't remember what had caused such a feeling. Warmth, comfortable with the press of so many that meant so much to him. Or it should have, if he could remember who they were.