Archive of Our Own

A very long time ago, hundreds of forevers before now, the universe split into a thousand pieces.

It wasn’t the first time it had been splintered, and it wasn’t the first time it had been broken by a person rather than an event, or something bigger than itself. 

The universe operates on its own terms, making and breaking the rules it has created for itself, bending them whenever it feels like it should. The universe can be convinced, can be swayed, can be propositioned to. 

The universe is not cruel. 

After spending longer than could ever be told watching, observing, feeling, the universe has learnt how to love in its own right. There are standards of love that it can never meet or begin to understand, but it does love in its own right. It is not cruel, or uncaring, or angry. It watches and feels and experiences, lives through all facets of life that it has made, and it loves. 

And so, the universe can be convinced. The universe can be persuaded. It can be made to break on its own terms, shifting out of place just enough to allow for something to spill through the cracks. 

The universe knows love because it has been made to understand it. 

When there is an act of love so wild and untamed, loud enough that the universe can feel it echoing through the already-there fragments in its core, it listens. It does not always respond, sometimes it cannot, but it always listens. It listens, listens, listens. It will pay close attention to the demands, the pleas, the words that come from something deeper, spilling out into the world. When someone takes the time to stick their hands into the fragments of the universe, the universe will always take the time to hear their pleas.

And the universe can be convinced.

It begins like this:

Two souls, so intertwined with each other that it is difficult to tell them apart at first, refuse to leave the world. They have fled their bodies, they settle in the air and in the earth, but they will not disappear and return to the universe as they are meant to. They scream and howl and fight, and so the universe allows them time to adjust. This is not uncommon; sometimes, souls become afraid.

These souls are not afraid. They are furious.

The universe listens to their screaming. They are loud and angry, and they demand to go back.

The universe listens a little more carefully.

They demand to go back to “her”. 

It does not take long for the universe to find “her”, this terribly angry young woman, who has her nails dug into the universe itself, as if she has every intention of ripping it apart. The universe does not need her to do this. It will listen if she allows it to. 

She is equally as furious as the two souls that hover nearby. She screams until she no longer has a voice left to give. The universe feels her sink into the earth, and it watches. She begs then, and tells the universe a story about love. It had already known of her love for the two stubborn souls that refused to leave; it could feel the emotion deep inside of itself, rippling out through the branches in which it holds memories, fragments, convictions, declarations. 

This story of love is one the universe has not heard before, not wholly. It has caught glimpses of this story from the two souls that continue to scream at it—the one tinged with purple, the other tinged with pink. Her, their third soul in this story of love, soul is blue. 

The universe has always delighted in seeing what colours its souls take on for themselves. There are replicas, copies, duplicates. It is rare for two different souls to share the exact same colour, but these three have managed to take bits and pieces of each other for themselves. The one with purple has streaks of pink on the outer edges, dashes of blue cutting through the mix. The one with pink has crooked purple lines throughout it, scattered dots of blue. Her, the one with blue, is enveloped on either side—purple on the left, pink on the right. 

The universe recognises the one with purple. Distantly, there is another soul similar in colour, one that has equally refused to leave. Distantly, there is another “her”, who pleads and begs. She is less angry, more scared. She is not like the one with blue, who has her teeth dug into the fabric of the universe itself, who has slowly started to tear and tear and tear until the universe cannot find it within itself to ignore her.

“She” is the one with orange. Her soul is smudged with a dozen shades of lavender. She tells another story about love, and the universe chooses to listen twice.

The one with purple seems to be the most unafraid of them all. The universe bends the rules in the one with purple’s direction. The universe is not cold or unkind, and it finds a sort of solace in the idea of this soul, in the intensity of it, in how loud it is.

The universe listens to her speak and plead, it pays careful attention to the story she tells. It has felt love before, it is made up of love, but it has not felt a love exactly like this one. It has not been so dug into before. The universe knows love, and it knows desperation, and it knows the act of loving, let alone twice, can turn into something wild, untamed, fierce, viscous. 

The one with blue tells it as much. She has lost the ability to scream, but she still tries. Eventually, her voice fails entirely. It does not matter, as the two souls that belong to her have not lost their voices, and they are still screaming.

The universe listens. Even if it had been cruel, even if it had been unkind, it would not have mattered. It would have broken regardless of if it had been willing, she would have made sure of that.

The universe splinters in a way that allows for the world to continue playing out the story of love it has been told so much about. It makes room for the two souls howling at it, carefully carving a space within the one with blue’s chest for them to belong to. The universe is not cruel, but there are rules even it cannot bend without breaking wholly. Instead, it does what it can do, and it bends and bends and bends, splintering until the one with blue has broken into two halves, merging into the two souls that she had desperately called back.

There is no longer the one with blue, or the one with purple, or the one with pink. There are three golden souls, with one splintered into two pieces, tucked away within the other two. Not gone, but settled elsewhere, for there to be space for them to return to.

And then the universe speaks to her, hoping that its words are full of the love that she had taught it:

“Find them.”

They find her.

When it happens, it knocks the air out of Zoey’s lungs, and she feels something in her chest start to buzz, a deep sort of static that doesn’t go away, even after Mira and Rumi are gone, whisked away into the air and into the dirt. The hollow in her chest does not leave—she knows it never will—but it doesn’t feel as suffocating as it had been before, every forever, every lifetime before this.

Zoey still drags herself to the corner of the world and screams until she can’t, until her voice is so close to being taken from her again, until all she can feel is pain splintering throughout her body, until she’s desperate for each breath she takes to be her last. They never are, and Zoey will always crawl back into the home they have lived in for however long, spending the next years of her life hidden away, waiting.

But this time, the pain dwindles. It isn’t as all-consuming as it usually is. It does not strangle her, it does not suffocate her, it does not make her forget her name or who she was or who she will be, in another thousand forevers when she finds them again.

Zoey stays Zoey.

This is almost harder than it had been before, back when all she could feel was pain, back when every single day of her life was spent despondent from the world around her. Forgetting her name, forgetting how to breathe, had almost been easier to do. Zoey wonders if that’s because this—the act of remembering and being and living—is actually harder, or because she had gotten used to what it felt like to drown.

She’s left to face the hollow in her chest head-on, more than she ever has in a very, very long time. Zoey takes to sleeping on the couch, staring up at the ceiling until exhaustion pulls her under and allows her a few hours of reprieve. On nights where things are particularly bad, where she nearly falls back into being unable to remember herself, Zoey crawls into their bed and buries her face into the pillows and blankets, clinging onto the remainder of their perfume, of what they used to smell like. 

She wears their clothes now more than ever. Zoey can’t seem to keep herself from reaching out for them, desperately trying to hold onto the fragments of them that still remain. It usually takes her longer before she cracks and caves, usually going years without so much as touching the envelopes they’ve left behind, or the voice memos, or the pictures, or the videos. 

This time is different. 

Zoey’s collection of them has grown to a near-unmanageable rate, but she refuses to part with anything. The idea of getting rid of them in any regard is enough to make her sick, and so she takes the time to buy more chests, more lockboxes, more bags, more everythings, all with the single-minded goal of having more space to hold onto them. Journals and letters go in her lockbox, photos and polaroids scattered through the bottom of it. They’ve always dated the pictures, and it’s something of a miracle now that Zoey is looking, because they look the exact same now as they did the last two times.

Stubborn, she thinks. Stubborn, stubborn souls. 

Zoey plays old voice memos, ones from so many forevers ago, and settles out in the kitchen, in Mira’s spot by the window. She lounges on the porch and listens to one of Rumi’s songs, arms tucked behind her head, staring up at the overhang as the sun rises from the horizon. Zoey listens to Mira’s lengthy rant about nearly hitting a bus while she tried to park from one or two times before, finding herself laughing as the words fill the house.

They lived out in the country this time around. Rumi was the one who was desperate to get out of the city, and Mira has never minded where they’ve lived, so long as they’re together—Zoey understands entirely—and so they came here. 

It’s nice.

Zoey can barely believe that she’s thinking that. It’s nice, still.

The hollow in her chest does not go away. It doesn’t even fade, really, not enough for her to be able to go a full day without breaking down in tears. But she laughs at the over-exaggerated stories Rumi has left for her, and she grins the entire time Mira talks her through a recipe, and she can’t help but roll her eyes when both Rumi and Mira come in to leave her notes about taking care of her, and how they’re sure she’s doing a “sub-par job”. 

Zoey spends most of her days listening to them. She sings along to the songs Rumi has written, she listens to the detailed scripts Mira talks about, because she’s been more and more interested in movies, especially after finding out that Zoey’s favourite movie doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for a very, very long time. She spends her time cooking meals that Mira and Rumi would have loved. She spends hours out in the garden, taking care of the plants the two of them were so terribly fond of. She spends a lot of time down by the river near their house, where she could always, always find Rumi. 

When they started getting older, Rumi had thrown about a thousand fits about not being able to make the trip anymore. Zoey carried her to and from the river, and Rumi always would howl with laughter in Zoey’s arms, teasing her the entire way, as if she had any right. She’d make the return trip for Mira, who was far more polite—up until she started jeering about Zoey’s height, but Zoey was more than happy to roll her eyes and take all of it, just so she could watch the two of them with their feet in the water, grinning so hard it had to have hurt.

She’d take anything for the two of them. She likes to think that she has always made that clear, trips to the river or not.

The seasons roll by.

Winter turns into spring into early summer, and the first raspberries start to grow in. Zoey spends a very long time staring at them through the window, stood directly in Mira’s spot. Well, slightly off to the side of it; Zoey has never moved the well-loved chair Mira dragged up to the window, covered in an equally well-loved quilt and blankets, and she never will. 

The memories, as always, never go away. 

Zoey is hit with the day she spent out in the garden, not particularly paying attention to Rumi, who had been beyond excited for raspberry season. Mira had been on the porch, sprawled out with her hands stretching across the wood, sunbeams falling right into her face. One of her dozens of cat-naps that day. At some point, Rumi must have tried to talk to her, but Zoey hadn’t noticed, which, of course, was the worst thing she had ever done in the entirety of their lives.

Rumi, all very casually, had said, “Are these berries going to kill me if I eat one?”

And that, obviously, got Zoey’s attention. Just in time for her to turn and watch Rumi shove a raspberry into her mouth, except Zoey hadn’t seen it beforehand, and all she could do was stand there and stare at her, mouth agape, blinking rapidly as Rumi gave her that ridiculous, crooked grin, eyes twinkling in the sunlight. 

Mira, helpful as ever, had just started to laugh, offering a very reassuring, “Maybe!”

Zoey was left bewildered and sputtering, and then she dropped the stupid shears she had her hands to go and throttle Rumi, who practically howled with laughter the entire time, giggling wildly as she thrashed in Zoey’s grasp while Zoey treated her like the wild animal she clearly was and made her open her mouth like a dog, up until she realised what Rumi had done. And then she paid even less attention to her, but only for five minutes until Rumi’s bright laughter had managed to worm its way under her skin.

Ridiculous. 

Zoey picks raspberries and keeps them on their kitchen island, rolling her eyes every single time she walks past them. The memories of feeding them to Mira and Rumi make her heart stutter, and it gets easier for her to forget that she’s the only one eating them.

Summer slinks on by. Autumn slowly arrives, the chill feeling sort of like home.

Mira always groused about it. Complained and grumbled and miserably would hoist herself out of bed with all their blankets wrapped around her shoulders. She still always settled on the porch with them, but she was insistent on getting tea or coffee—or anything hot—made for her as stipulation. All of Zoey’s autumns and winters have been spent fighting Rumi on who gets to do it, because the logical choice of sharing the responsibility has never once crossed either of their minds until they’re halfway through making Mira two cups of whatever it was she asked for; not like Mira ever complained. 

The leaves change. The shift from green to yellow and orange and red makes Zoey’s head spin. 

Sometimes, even after all this time, she can’t wrap her mind around how the world just...continues. Usually, she’s not all that present for this. She can acknowledge the seasons passing by only distantly, and she’s almost always surprised by the sudden cold, or the sudden heat, or the snow on the ground, or the promise of fresh blooms. It takes her a long time to remember how to breathe, and even longer for her to actually take that first breath when the tug in her chest returns. 

But Zoey watches the leaves change this time. She sits on their porch, drinks the coffee Mira would have wanted, listens to Rumi’s singing, and watches the clouds pass by, inching across the sky. There’s no tug, but the pain becomes a little less sharp. There are days where it flares up worse than it ever has before, where it wraps around her throat and leaves Zoey choking on nothing at all, gasping for air she doesn’t even want. There are days where it fades almost entirely, where the days stretch on for a little longer, lazy shadows on walls, where Zoey almost feels as if Rumi and Mira are just outside.

She makes trips down to the river more often. She brings Rumi’s guitar, sings for the water and the frogs there, the ones that Rumi hated, because they always would hop on her while she was sunbathing, and it terrified her every time. Mira was always put on frog-duty, while Zoey dutifully reapplied sunscreen every few hours. 

Mira caught a fish in her hands once, so many years ago. She didn’t even mean to. Zoey remembers hearing her gasp so loud and so hard that she thought something had happened, and then she looked over her shoulder to find a rapidly flopping fish trapped between her hands, Mira’s eyes huge, mouth opening and closing frantically, looking totally and utterly helpless. Like the world’s least effective grizzly bear.

Rumi laughed so hard she nearly died, and Zoey was hardly any better. Mira eventually managed to get the bright idea to just drop the fish into the water again, and then she sat on the bank of the river for a few minutes with her hands splayed out in front of her, miserably muttering something about how she hadn’t expected to actually grab it. 

Zoey called her “Grizzly” for the rest of the year. 

The garden stays well-taken care of. Zoey spends hours outside, seeing flickers of Rumi and Mira everywhere she looks. In the trees beside the house; on the porch, stepping out of the front door; jogging up from the river while wildly cackling; taking the time to bring her a handful of raspberries; disappearing out of sight through the fields; shutting the door behind them after finally trudging back inside for the night. 

They never leave the corner of her vision; Zoey almost feels like they’re still there half the time.

It’s almost comforting, as if their souls are making an effort to tell her that they’re still there, nearby.

Waiting for her. 

Winter rolls back around, and the first snow sends her spiraling. 

Last winter wasn't as bad. 

Zoey sits on their porch and sobs into her hands until she can’t breathe, until the chill freezes deep in her bones, until every movement she makes is laboured and exhausting and near-excruciating. She drags herself back inside once she realises she can barely move, collapsing in their living room. She doesn’t bother getting up. 

When the sun rises, Zoey finds that she’s regained feeling in her body. She begrudgingly moves after that, quietly settling into the kitchen to force herself to eat something. It takes several attempts to even boil water, with her hands trembling so hard she can barely pick anything up, but she eventually manages.

Breakfast is quiet. It takes all of five moments for Zoey to sigh, trudging back into their bedroom, staring at the unmade bed. Mira would have already made it by now. Rumi was more particular about it, but Mira was always the one who actually made it for the three of them. Zoey turns her gaze away from the blankets, moving over to her nightstand that she shared with Rumi. Grabs her phone, spins on her heels, settles back at the table.

The video she pulls up is one she’s seen at least a million times before. 

Zoey props it up on the empty vase in the middle of the table, resting her head on her arms after she presses play, watching Mira and Rumi come to life across from her.

They’re already grinning, with Rumi punching Mira in the shoulder, all while Mira laughs and completely ignores her. It takes them a few seconds before their eyes shift back to the camera, before they’re both getting a little more serious.

“Hi, Zoey!” Rumi starts, planting a hand on Mira’s face to shove her back. “You’re out for the day—the whole day, which, really? Super not cool.”

“Rumi’s clingy,” Mira sings, the laughter starting back up in full when Rumi goes back to playfully boxing her. “But so am I, so...whatever. We miss you.”

Rumi rapidly nods. “A lot. And, okay, maybe you’ve only been gone for, like, two minutes—”

“—But it’s two minutes too long,” Mira solemnly finishes. “And you’re going to be gone the entire day, so that’s just two minutes of a literal eternity. You were being super weird about it, too. What were you doing? I’m giving you ten seconds to answer.”

Zoey closes her eyes for a second, a soft smile being forced onto her face as she murmurs, “Ring shopping.”

“Not a good enough reason,” Rumi instantly says. Eight seconds, not ten. “Sounds like an excuse to not hang out with us.”

Mira snorts, but she quickly agrees, “Whatever it was, you should have taken us with you. Next time, we’re just going to show up, and then what? Your cover’s gonna be blown, Zo. Whatever secret you’re keeping? We’re totally going to find out.”

“Did we find out?” Rumi asks after a second. “Or did you just, like, hide it from us forever?”

Zoey breathes out, some of the tension in her shoulders disappearing. “I asked you both to marry me, like, a month la—”

“Anyway!” Rumi cuts her off. “We’re recording to say hi! And that we miss you, and that we love you, and that we’re going to see you soon. I can own it, I’m clingy. And so is Mira, obviously, so...you know. Just know that we’re coming for you, babe.”

Mira laughs wildly, throwing her head back. “We—we’re coming for her? Dude. That’s pretty much a threat. You just threatened Zoey! What’s wrong with you?”

“What?” Rumi sputters. “It’s—it’s not a threat! It’s a promise!”

That turns Mira’s wild laughter into giddy, gleeful cackling. “Oh, it’s a promise, huh? You’re gonna hunt her down, Ru?”

Rumi huffs and puffs, immediately going right back into fake-boxing. “You know what? Yeah. I am! And you’re never gonna expect it,” Rumi says, directing her gaze back onto the camera, crooked grin flashing at her. “So watch out, Zoey. Actually, can you go to a trampoline park next time? Please? It would be really funny.”

“Oh my god, what’s with you?” Mira laughs, rolling her eyes. “You never used to be this obsessed with trampoline parks. When did this change? Who even are you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Rumi asks, sticking out her tongue. “I’ve always liked trampoline parks! You’ve just never bothered to ask!”

“Okay, that’s literally not even true.”

“Seems pretty true to me.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“That’s great, babe. Anyway, Zoey—we love you! How are you doing?” Rumi asks, voice a little more gentle. “Are you listening to these? You better be.”

Mira nods. “Because it’s such a long, arduous process to have to press the record button and sit here and talk. Obviously.”

“Let her answer!” Rumi laughs. “How are you?”

Zoey sighs, lolling her head to the side. “Me. I’m me. And it’s different, and I don’t know what to do, and I miss you. I love you. I love you,” she whispers, eyes flitting back to the screen. “I love you.”

The pause lasts for a little too long before Mira softly says, “We love you, Zo. You know that. We’ll be back soon, okay? Sooner than you think. It’s always sooner than you think, right? That’s what you always say.”

“We love you so much,” Rumi quietly adds. “Sooner than you think, okay, Zoey? We’ll find you. We’ll find you, just like we did this time. Promise.”

“Promise,” Mira agrees. “Just like this time.”

“Okay,” Rumi murmurs. “We’re gonna get some chores done around the house. We’ll stay on, though. Like a phone call! I love you, Zoey!”

“More than anything,” Mira says with a smile. “Take a nap, maybe. I know you don’t sleep well. It’s basically like ASMR, though. I know that’s, like, Rumi’s thing, but...you know. Can’t hurt to try, right?”

Rumi clicks her tongue, rolling her eyes. “I watched one whole video, and now that’s my thing?”

“Yup,” Mira easily agrees. “Now shoo. I’m doing dishes, you can vacuum.”

Zoey watches as they wave before they slink off out of sight. The noise starts up immediately, with the water starting to run half a second before she hears Rumi’s footsteps padding back to the living room, the familiar sound of the vacuum dragging behind her. 

She closes her eyes, feeling herself slip away, just like they asked of her.

It’s nice, soothing some of the hurt inside of her chest. Just enough.

The seasons keep passing by.

Zoey absentmindedly keeps track of the days, of the months, of the years. 

Today marks year thirty. Three decades.

She’s still her. They’re still gone. Zoey has gotten a little better at breathing, though it still feels unnatural to her. She doesn’t understand the reasoning behind why she’s still her, but she is, and it’s...nicer, she’s decided. Zoey thinks that she prefers to this to how it was before, when she’d slip away into a corner of her mind that she only went to when she needed to wait.

Zoey is still waiting. She’s definitely still waiting, but it feels a little less heavy. Not easier, just less suffocating. 

Zoey is in town today, casually striding through the farmer’s market that crops up every summer. She’s dragged Rumi and Mira to these just about a thousand times, and the weight of their absences has been enough to make her head spin. Zoey pushes through it the best she can manage, forcing herself to smile and make polite conversation with everyone who speaks to her first, casually trading notes about produce. 

She listens carefully, patiently, taking in what’s being said to her. It makes her feel almost normal; she’s always loved talking to people and learning from them. Zoey has spent more than enough time here to be proficient in nearly anything and everything someone could be, but she still likes to learn. She’s had hundreds of hobbies, though most of them go untouched during the period of waiting.

Not this time.

Zoey has taken up sewing again, though she’s not nearly as good at it as Mira, who seems to just have an innate talent for it. Gardening is obviously still her biggest hobby, though she also got that from Mira (and Rumi). Zoey has started to really tap into singing during the last few forevers, and she’s found that she enjoys it more than she thought she would. She’s always been more than happy to sit back and listen to Rumi sing, but Zoey thinks that it would be nice to sing with her the next time around. Mira has a beautiful voice, too—Zoey is very convinced she can get Mira in on it with her.

Zoey has bought at least five or six books about birds and birdwatching, which Mira has always pretended like she’s not interested in, but Zoey has seen the way she stares, how she’s able to list off the names of birds with a suspicious lack of hesitation. Zoey has also bought books about foraging, which is a particular favourite of Rumi’s. It’s in a similar vein to gardening, but Rumi has always loved dragging them both off into the woods and dutifully shoving two different kinds of mushrooms in their face and making them tell her which one kills you and which one is good to eat.

She brushes up on the constellations. Finds herself accepting an offer for horseback riding. She spends hours at a time skipping stones across the river, which she’s always been better at than Rumi and Mira, much to their displeasure. She makes a few trips down to the beach to pick up shells and sea glass, weaving them into pieces of jewelry that she doubts she’ll ever wear, but she’ll likely give to Mira and Rumi when they come back.

Zoey reads a lot. Mostly Rumi’s books that she’s collected over the years, though she’s careful when she handles the particularly old ones, and she mostly doesn’t risk it, because she knows Rumi is beyond proud of her collection. Zoey spends a lot of time on the porch, Rumi’s guitar against her arm, Mira’s quilt in her lap, and she watches the clouds and the sky and the stars. 

It’s quiet at home, sometimes. Zoey still plays voice memos and videos and recordings almost all the time, but it’s easier for her to live through the silence without feeling like it’s going to kill her. Hearing their voices gets harder when winter rolls around—it had taken Rumi from her—and becomes difficult again in the spring—Mira never lasts very long after Rumi—but it’s starting to even out, just a little. 

And she likes hearing them. Zoey likes setting her phone up and replaying videos until she can recite what’s being said, word for word. She likes hearing them talk to each other, she likes hearing her voice in the background of some of the recordings. It had made her uncomfortable at first, a horrible, twisting feeling crawling up her throat, but it had disappeared quickly. Zoey thinks it’s just more proof that they’ll come back; they did the last time, and they have every time before that, and there she was for each time, so they’ll come back.

Sooner than she thinks.

Zoey spends the next few hours in the farmer’s market, eventually moving to stand off to the side with her hands in her pocket, letting the sun warm her face. She’s wearing one of Mira’s flannels and a pair of Rumi’s boots, and the flannel has long-since stopped smelling like Mira, but she swears she can almost smell her. Zoey doesn’t feel a tug in her chest, not even a small one, so she knows they’re not here, not yet, but there’s the slightest prickle of hope in the back of her mind.

Rumi did say they’d sneak up on her, after all. 

Zoey smiles as she watches a handful of children run around in the dirt, tackling each other, being warned off by their parents. She blinks when she feels something brush up against her leg, peering down at the little black cat that’s come to try and get her attention. 

Zoey laughs, crouching down as she reaches her hand out, watching as the cat bumps into her wrist, already rumbling softly. It has two little white spots on its chest, curled into two halves of a heart. It meows up at her, eyes big and round and ridiculously yellow, and Zoey can’t help but grin.

“Hi,” she whispers, scratching behind its ears. “Did someone send you to say hi to me?”

The cat meows up at her, purring a little louder.

Zoey takes a second, crinkling her nose as she looks from side to side. She already has everything she wants in her backpack, and it’s getting late, and she probably should stay, but...

She’s going to take the cat if she doesn’t leave, and what if he belongs to someone? 

“Okay,” Zoey sighs, rubbing her knuckles against the bridge of his little nose. “I gotta go. I’ll come back tomorrow, okay? How about that?”

Zoey gives him one last scratch behind the ear, standing up fully as she turns to leave. She’s only walking for about a minute before she hears the grass moving behind her, and—

There he is. Trailing right after her with those big yellow eyes and the sorriest meow she’s ever heard in her life. And he’s alone, and...

Zoey feels tears almost sting at her eyes. She laughs, shaking her head as she crouches back down, letting the cat rub against her hand, meowing at her again. “Fine. Fine! You win!” Zoey giggles, standing back up. “C’mon, buddy.”

The walk back home isn’t very long, and the cat keeps up with her pace almost impressively well. She thinks about picking him up, but he seems pretty content to run and weave around her legs as they trail back to the house, so she thinks that he’s doing just fine. Zoey laughs again when the cat races up the front porch as if he’s been here his whole life, meowing at her in a long, high-pitched yowl, like he’s going to die if she doesn’t let him inside.

The yowling reminds her of Rumi. The way he presses his head into the palm of her hand reminds her of Mira.

Zoey unlocks the door, grinning so hard her face hurts when he rushes inside, poofing up almost immediately. The fur on his spine sticks up, and he hunches up so quickly that it makes Zoey laugh again, shaking her head as she watches him saunter at a tilt.

“Brave,” she teases, shrugging her backpack off of her shoulder. She sets it down on the kitchen table, watching as the cat continues to move from side to side, sniffing carefully at the couch. “Nothing here’s going to bite, buddy. Promise.”

Zoey starts going through her bag, pulling out the strawberries and pears and peaches she bought, setting them off to the side. She drags out a few blocks of cheese, two candles that made her think of Mira and Rumi. Zoey giggles when the cat starts weaving between her legs again, as if he hadn’t just been so terrified he had to get all poofy. 

Then he makes the ridiculous move of clambering up the kitchen table, sniffing one of the candles—the one that made her think of Rumi—and hisses so hard that it actually catches Zoey off guard.

“Hey,” she chides, rolling her eyes. “You need to be nice. They’re—they’re not here yet,” Zoey says, hoisting the cat up into her arms, letting him wrap around her shoulders. “But when Rumi and Mira get back, you’re going to have to learn how to like them, okay? Rumi gets all pouty when animals don’t like her, and I know Mira is worse about it, even if she doesn’t say anything.”

He gives another pathetic meow, and Zoey giggles, shaking her head. “Okay, bud. You’ll play nice, I believe you. And you need a name. Do you have a name?”

The cat is notably quiet. Zoey snorts, slowly moving to actually put everything away. She starts with the candles, taking those back into their room, setting the lilac one on Mira’s nightstand, putting the cinnamon one on the nightstand she shared with Rumi. Zoey migrates back into the kitchen, feeling the cat rumble around her shoulders, head bonking into her own.

She smiles as she works on putting all the produce in the fridge, opening up the crisper to shove most of what she got into that. She pauses when she looks back to the peaches on the kitchen table, blinking.

“Peaches,” Zoey muses. She reaches up, scratching the cat’s head. “Do you like that? Peaches? I think it’s pretty cute. I would name you Derpy, but, y’know.” Zoey grins, holding up her hands as she drops her voice, “We’ve had ten cats named Derpy, and that’s ten cats too many.”

She can practically feel Mira’s scathing glare. It makes her giggle again, eyes crinkling at the sides as she sighs, petting the cat, Peaches, a little harder.

Eventually, Peaches wriggles his way off of her shoulder and saunters off elsewhere in the house, stalking down a hallway and immediately hissing at the first room he looks at. Zoey grins the entire time, laughing whenever she hears a particularly mournful hiss, as if Peaches is directly trying to insult her for how the house is laid out. 

Zoey loops back into their room for a second to grab her phone, pulling up another voice memo she’s listened to just about a thousand times. 

“Hi, Zoey!” Rumi’s voice echoes throughout the kitchen, and Zoey can’t help but laugh when Peaches immediately rushes out into the living room, peering up at her. 

Zoey presses pause on the memo, setting her phone on the table. “This is Rumi. You like her voice, huh? Everyone does. Mira’s going to come on in a few seconds.”

She presses play.

“I miss you! Like, so much. Right now, you’re just, um...okay, maybe you’re just a room over, but whatever. I miss you! I always miss you! I think it’s just me making up for a lot of lost time, so, sue me, your girlfriend misses you.”

“For the record,” Mira starts, “Your other girlfriend also misses you.”

Zoey presses pause again, watching as Peaches continues to stare up at her. “That’s Mira,” Zoey explains. “Her voice is deeper than Rumi’s. Sometimes she sounds a little mean, but she’s a total softie. Promise.”

She presses play again, going back to putting away her haul.

“It’s been boring today,” Mira says, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “It’s way too hot to go outside, and they’re literally doing construction, too, so it’s just loud and hot, and it sucks. Hate it.”

Rumi’s laugh fills the air. “Seconding that, I also hate it. And you’re only in the other room because you’re making a shopping list, and you told us to get ready, and...uh, um, you know.”

“We’re getting ready in spirit,” Mira dutifully reports. “In our hearts, we’re dressed. That’s basically enough.”

“You’re totally gonna kill us,” Rumi mutters, almost miserably. “She’s going to kill us, Mir.”

Mira snickers, sounding sort of pleased. “She can try. She’s ticklish.”

“So are you!”

“Yeah, but she’s more ticklish.”

“Whatever. We gotta go,” Rumi says. “So it’s just a short one today! We’ll be back soon, though! Not today, probably, I know we’re watching that movie you’ve been begging to see for the last, like, month. But later. And we’ll actually be back soon, too.”

Mira hums her agreement, and Zoey can hear shuffling a second later. “We’ll find you soon, okay? We’re probably already on our way. I bet I’m winning.”

“Not even true. It’s me first.”

“Wasn’t this time.”

“Freak accident,” Rumi teases. “So there. Anyway—”

“What? No, you don’t get to just move on—”

“Already did! Tell Zoey you love her!”

Mira laughs, clearly exasperated, but she immediately says, “I love you, Zoey. So much. More than you could ever imagine. Thank you for taking on the gargantuan task of making the world’s longest shopping list so I didn’t have to do it.”

“Thank you, Zoey!” Rumi parrots. “I mean, I could have totally done it, and I would have loved to, really, but you literally stole the paper out of my hands, so...whatever. I love you! A lot! More than anything! We’ll see you soon, okay? Bye, Zoey!”

“Bye, Zo!”

Zoey smiles, sniffling as she wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah,” she whispers, looking over to Peaches, who has decidedly made his way to Mira’s chair, sniffing carefully at the quilt before he chooses to hop up there. He circles once, twice, a third time, and then he settles, paws stretching out in the sun.

“Yeah,” Zoey murmurs, a little louder, her heart twisting in her chest. “Soon.”

Peaches comes with her to the farmer’s market. Zoey gets out one of her old cat backpacks she had for Derpy #20, and Peaches takes to it immediately.

When they actually get there, Zoey lets him out, watching as one of the vendors laughs a little and mentions something about being glad that the little cat has found a home, finally. 

Zoey’s glad, too.

She doesn’t need anything more—she spent more than enough time here yesterday to be stocked up for the foreseeable future—but she’s been wanting to get out a little more. Zoey thinks it must have something to do with replaying dozens of voice memos of Mira and Rumi all but threatening her to get out of the house more, to live her life in a way that doesn’t have to hurt. Zoey has never been able to do it before now, but here she is. Outside, talking to people, watching her cat chase butterflies in the grass.

Zoey has one of Rumi’s white tank tops on, a pair of Mira’s earrings. The world still smells like the both of them. Zoey feels the sun on her face, watches Peaches absentmindedly, makes talk with the few children that run up to her and compliment her on her earrings, or her rings, or the necklaces she’s wearing, or her hair. She talks to vendors and listens to them tell their stories, and it all feels so much easier than it has before.

Zoey doesn’t stay long. She goes back home with a backpack full of desserts with Peaches at her heels, because he hisses when she tries to put him back in the bag, and the sun on her back.

She stays out on the porch for a while, letting Peaches sniff her food. He doesn’t seem like the kind of cat to beg, and she’s right about that, but she wants him to feel included, too. 

And then she’s telling him stories about Mira and Rumi before she even really means to, the words tumbling out of her mouth as she recounts thousands of memories just from this cycle alone. Zoey points out the tree across from the porch, the one Rumi had nearly fallen from and died when she was trying to string up Christmas lights at Zoey’s insistence. She talks about Mira’s ridiculous fish story, she tells him all about how many times they spent trying to figure out the perfect weather for a picnic only for the day they chose to turn out to start hailing—Mira had been insistent that the hail had only hit her, which was mostly true, and all Zoey could do was throw her head back and laugh at the sight of her, soaked to the bone, hair sticking out at odd angles, all while Rumi frantically darted to-and-from the house, trying to grab their stuff.

Peaches is an apt listener, Zoey finds. It makes her laugh to think about, resting her cheek against her knuckles as she watches him bat at sunbeams and roll over onto his side, giving a pitiful meow that means ‘pet me’, which Zoey is more than happy to do.

Later, Zoey thinks she’ll come back out with Rumi’s guitar and play for an hour or two. She’ll start trying to sew something for Peaches after that, later in the evening. He’d look dashing with a little bandana, or a poncho. 

For now, she sits on the porch, watches the clouds, and lives.

“They totally sent you, huh?” Zoey asks as she walks down to the river, Peaches bounding at her heels. “You’re so clingy, buddy. There’s no way that’s just what you’re like,” she teases, grinning when Peaches proves her point by bumping his head to her leg. “Uh-huh. Not helping your case, Peachy.”

Zoey doesn’t entirely believe that Mira and Rumi’s souls—currently parading through the universe, twirling and dancing around—managed to lead her to a stray cat, but she wouldn’t exactly be surprised, either. They’ve always been stubborn like that, and defying fate and expectations has been their goal from the beginning. It would hardly be out of character for the both of them to work up the ability to send her a companion. 

She loves him. Peaches follows her around everywhere, and it’s only been a few months of her having him. He goes on walks with her, follows her through the house, out of the house. He’s never out of sight for very long, and Zoey can’t help but wonder how she ever lived without him. He’s forced her into a sort of routine, too, because she has to brush him every day and clean out the cat box and go to the store to get food for him. He’s a terrible hunter—Zoey saw him chasing a mouse once only to get spooked and bolt in the opposite direction.

She settles at the river bank, leaning forward to run her fingers through the water. Peaches curiously sniffs the sand, pacing back and forth before he flops over in the nearby grassy area.

“Careful, buddy,” Zoey warns, grinning at the way he cranes his head up, just slightly, clearly looking vaguely in her direction. “There are frogs out here. Your mom hated them. And I know you’re the bravest cat to ever live, but she was also the bravest ever, and, you know,” Zoey snickers, ducking her head. “Frogs were the bane of her existence.”

Rumi would have probably started miserably whining about that, and Mira would have definitely egged it on, and Zoey can practically see them wrestling and tugging her into the river with them.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Instead, there’s only the soft noises of the world around her. Zoey leans back on her hands, tilting her head up with her eyes closed, letting the cool breeze hit her. Summer is turning back into autumn, and it’s already starting to rain more. It’s windier out, too, and Zoey isn’t going to let Peaches out with her when it’s getting colder. He’s a long-haired cat, but that hardly means much of anything when there’s snow.

She doesn’t even want to imagine what he was doing back in the winter before her. 

Peaches eventually wriggles his way onto her lap, head bonking into her chest until Zoey laughs and starts petting him. “We’re not going to be out here for very long,” she says, scratching the spot under his chin that he goes crazy for. “Just an hour or two. Okay?”

Zoey doesn’t get a response, but the ache through her bones dissipates just a little more, and she swears that Rumi and Mira must have had something to do with all of this.

Forty years.

Zoey lays in bed with Peaches rumbling on her chest like a freight train, so loud it’s almost comical. She let him move into bed with her after a year, after he started scratching at the door to get in. Most of her other cats never really had an interest in closed-off rooms beyond wanting to look inside once or twice, but Peaches has a lot of personality, so she’s not really surprised.

It just...took a while for her to get used to the idea of having something else in their bed that wasn’t Mira or Rumi. For the longest time, Zoey had slept on the couch. The idea of waking up, or feeling a weight on her chest in the middle of the night, only for it to not be them, made her sick.

And then he looked up at her with those stupid big eyes, meowed all sadly and miserably as if she was killing him by not letting him in, and Zoey couldn’t resist. 

He’s getting old. Technically, Zoey has no idea how old he actually is, but she assumed maybe a year or two when she first brought him home, which would make him nearly twelve now. He hasn’t really been showing any sign of getting sick or too old to eat or groom himself, which she’s thrilled about. He’s a stubborn little cat, and it makes Zoey kind of giddy to think about. 

He’s playful. Stubborn. The bravest little cat she’s ever met. He reminds her so much of Rumi and Mira that it’s sort of ridiculous, but she can’t help but see them in everything, Peaches included. She’s sure he wouldn’t mind; being compared to Mira and Rumi is basically the highest praise in her book, and she really thinks that he would love them, that they’d love him.

Zoey pets him as she sits in bed, absentmindedly going through the list of things she wants to do today. She needs to get out of the house again to buy Peaches more food and more toys, since he absolutely shredded Mr. Snake a few weeks back and has been miserably grieving the loss ever since. She’s well-stocked for herself, mostly, so it’ll probably be a quick outing just to get Peaches what he needs. 

Maybe she’ll wander around for a few hours. Just in case.

There hasn’t been a tug, not yet, but the years are slowly adding up. If there was a tug, right now, it would be one of the earliest times to-date for her to feel it. Zoey hasn’t been this hopeful in...as long as she can remember, really. She swears that Mira and Rumi finding her has done something to her, even if she can’t pinpoint why or how.

They’ve always been like that. Changing the goalposts.

“Okay,” Zoey sighs, patting Peaches a little harder than she likes to, but not nearly hard enough for him. It’s a compromise. “You gotta get up, Peachy. I’m sorry!” Zoey laughs as he gives her a miserable look, airplane ears and all. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to get you a few new toys, okay? Does that make up for it?”

Peaches gives a long huff, and then he’s throwing himself off the bed, padding out into the hallway.

Seems like a yes.

Zoey grins, stretching her arms above her head, feeling her back pop. She grabs her phone, randomly picking one of the hundreds of voice memos she has on hand. She’s met with immediate arguing, this time with her voice involved. 

Zoey laughs as she rolls her eyes, finally swinging her legs off the bed, stretching again once she’s on the ground. She listens as the three of them fight over something—she’s pretty sure this was about where they wanted to eat—as she gets ready to go out. 

Peaches pads back into the bedroom eventually, curling up in bed without her again. Zoey can’t help but smile as she watches it all happen, listening to Rumi’s wild, giddy laughter, to the way Mira huffs and puffs, how she giggles in the background. 

It feels like home. Zoey doesn’t breathe, but the rise and fall of her chest could almost be mistaken for it.

She loses Peaches two summers later.

Zoey barely even gets to acknowledge the two cats that are standing off in the distance, near the tree. A pretty tabby and a stunning dark orange cat, heads bonking together. She almost expects Peaches to hiss at them or to get all poofy, but then he’s running at them.

“Peaches!” Zoey hisses out, scrambling up to her feet, half-ready to sprint in to stop a full-blown fight, but then there’s—

Peaches bonks his head against the tabby’s. Then he does the same for the orange cat, and none of them are hissing or sputtering or fighting at all.

Zoey pauses, opening and closing her mouth for a few seconds, blinking rapidly at the sight. 

Peaches twists his head back around to look at her, meowing loud enough for her to hear. Like he’s asking a question. 

“You were waiting for them, huh?” Zoey whispers, feeling her face break out into a grin. “Go on. They found you. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Peaches bounds off first. He races away from her, and the tabby and the orange cat follow, chasing wildly after him, as if they’ve always done this.

Maybe they have.

Sixty-one years.

There’s a tug in her chest.

Zoey grins as she gets out of this bed for the last time, drawing in the first breath she’s taken in sixty-one years. 

There they are.

They find her first, just like last time.

They remember her, just like last time.

Zoey spots them from across the park, meets Rumi’s eyes first, and then she’s running to them with her arms out, throwing herself right at them. Rumi catches her, and then Mira is grabbing onto her, and all three of them are laughing and crying again, just like last time, and it’s so perfect that Zoey can barely remember a time where she didn’t have this, where she didn’t have them.

She says ‘I love you’ until she can’t breathe, and they say it back, and it’s perfect. 

Just like always.

It goes like that for a while. 

Mira and Rumi find her first, they remember, they spend forever together, and then they’re gone.

And then the cycle repeats, and they’re back to finding her, just like always.

Zoey stays herself. She spends decades alone in the new home they’ve built for themselves, spends her time indulging in all the familiar hobbies she picked up on with them over the years, and waits. 

But she stays herself.

She stays herself, and Rumi and Mira keep finding her first, keep remembering before she so much as looks at them, and the hollow in her chest dwindles just a little more each time. Slowly but surely, to the point where Zoey barely even notices it happening, but that tightness, the ache that she feels when they’re gone, stops being as impossible to live with.

“Told you,” Rumi says, smug and proud, her chest puffed out. “Universe has got nothing on me.”

Mira scoffs from beside her. “Do I mean nothing to you, Ru? Is that it? I literally—it was me again this time! I called you!”

Rumi waves a hand. “Not my problem.”

Zoey rolls her eyes as she stumbles back into their arms, another lifetime of forever disappearing when they hold her back. “You’re both unbelievable.”

Stubborn, stubborn souls. Both of them.

Zoey wakes up early, a low ache in her back as she rolls out of bed, barely managing to not collapse to the ground. She lets out a quiet groan as she presses her hands to her back, stumbling out of their room. Mira and Rumi weren’t in bed with her, and she’s hardly surprised to find them out in the kitchen, though they’re still kind of just an amalgamation of shapes and colours, given how she’s squinting so hard she can barely see at all.

“Zoey!” Rumi calls, waving both of her hands. “Good morning!”

“Morning, love,” Mira calls back over her shoulder, standing idly by the stove. “Feeling better?”

For the first time in a long time, Zoey had gotten sick. Actually sick. She’s not exactly immune to the common cold or anything like that, but it still caught her off guard when she woke up feeling like she had been hit by a few dozen buses, miserably spending the next week in a state of constant exhaustion. Rumi and Mira pretty much put her on bedrest, not like Zoey was complaining, and spent that whole week taking care of her, more than usual.

Zoey is almost tempted to play it up to get a thousand for-you-kisses, but she chooses to sigh instead, dragging herself out into the kitchen, stumbling onto her stool. “Less like I’m about to drop dead,” she mutters, burying her head in her arms.

Rumi laughs at her, softly enough for Zoey to choose not to pick a fight with her. It’s hard to be pretend-angry when Rumi is laughing at her like that, all gentle and beautiful and pretty. Zoey lets out a far more content sigh when she feels hands running through her hair, noting them to be Mira’s a second later. Rumi isn’t slow to touch her, either, but she loops around to the other side of the kitchen island, rubbing small circles against her back.

After a second, Mira murmurs, “You gonna make it? Do you want me to carry you back to bed?”

“Absolutely,” Zoey agrees, pulling her head away from her arms just long enough to grin up at her, winking half a second later. “Your big, strong arms sound like heaven right now. Actually, can you take turns? If you wanna toss me to Rumi and have her toss me back, that’d be great. I think I’d love that. I think that’d fix me.”

Rumi snorts, peppering kisses to the back of her head. “I think you’d throw up, actually.”

“Like, all over,” Mira dutifully agrees, brushing hair out of her face. “And I love you, but I really don’t want to have to be thrown up on. At all. So...sorry, Zo. It’s a no from me.”

“And from me,” Rumi admits. “Maybe when you’re feeling better.”

Zoey rolls her eyes, dropping her head back down. “Just say you hate me.”

It has the intended effect—it gets her a thousand more kisses after Rumi and Mira sputter for a while, and all Zoey can do is grin at how they never, ever change.

Eventually, the both of them pull away from her to continue making breakfast, with Rumi gleefully citing that it is, in fact, for-you-breakfast, which Zoey had more or less been able to somehow figure out. Still, she’s more than happy to lazily watch them from where she sits, peering up past her arms. They work well together in the kitchen, even if it took just about a million years to get them to play nicely with each other.

Not like Zoey did any better. She still remembers the time she threatened to shove Rumi in the fridge until she could learn personal space, or the time she purposefully kept bumping into Mira until she got the hint to stop being by the sink every two seconds where Zoey literally needed to go. And it’s not as if those events are long gone, considering how Zoey can hear Rumi muttering something under her breath about Mira hogging the stove, which only makes Mira snicker and tell her to ‘get good’, and then they are fighting. 

Zoey adores them more than they could ever know. She loves them so badly that it makes her chest hurt, and she can’t help but grin as she watches the two of them exchange brief kisses in between all the arguing. They’re so ridiculous that it never fails to amaze her, and she’d never want anything different; just this, just them. Perfect as they are, hers.

They have breakfast in the kitchen after Mira decides to take the time to wash their bedding. Rumi sings while she does the dishes, and Zoey is allowed to tentatively help dry them, rolling her eyes the entire time Rumi tries to dissuade her. Zoey eventually shuffles off to the couch, where Mira ambushes her with freshly-dried blankets, piling them onto her until Zoey really doesn’t have any other choice than to stay there.

Rumi comes to join her, and Mira clambers onto the pile after, wrapping the both of them up in her arms. 

Zoey grins as she’s near-smothered by them, feeling warmer than she ever has in her entire life.

The years pass by, as they always do. 

“I don’t get how you guys keep doing this to me,” Mira grumbles, squinting at herself in the mirror. “I swear to god I keep getting wrinkles earlier and earlier, and it’s literally all your fault.”

Zoey giggles, shooting a grin in Rumi’s direction, who already is giving her that ridiculous crooked grin, eyes crinkled at the sides. She has wrinkles, too, around her eyes and lips. They’re faint, really, barely there, but Zoey can see them. The crow’s feet, the laugh lines. Mira is right, too—it’s sort of unbelievable how quickly it happens these days. 

All very suddenly, Rumi is grabbing her face.

“Ow!” Zoey laughs, wriggling back as she crinkles her nose. “Nails! Claws! You have claws, tiger!”

“Smile,” Rumi says, her voice turning serious. It makes Zoey blink, especially with what’s being said to her. “Zoey. Smile again.”

Zoey stares at her for a second, but she does what’s asked of her, curling her lips up into a smile. Rumi shakes her head, so Zoey breaks out into the most genuine grin she can force, wiggling her eyebrows as she does, waiting for Rumi to laugh.

She doesn’t.

Instead, Rumi stares at her with a sort of intensity that Zoey doesn’t think she’s ever seen before, eyes narrowed, clearly working her out. Then she’s being dragged off the bed, marched in front of Mira, who has turned away from the mirror by this point. 

“Look at her,” Rumi says, coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mira. “Keep smiling.”

“What is this?” Zoey asks, taking a second to squint at her. “Seriously, Ru.”

“Just—just do it, please?” Rumi asks, and Zoey immediately caves, because that specific note of pleading is deadly, and she’s never managed to get past it, even after all these years. Zoey grins again, eyes crinkling at the sides when she catches sight of Mira’s slightly amused look, as if this is more ridiculous than it is absurd.

And then Mira’s eyes are narrowing, just like Rumi’s, and—

“You have wrinkles," Mira says, bluntly.

“What?” Zoey demands, blinking rapidly. She brushes past Mira and Rumi, staring at herself in the mirror as she forces her expression back to what it had been, and it’s...

She has wrinkles.

Around her eyes. Around her lips. Small, but they’re there. Noticeable. 

Zoey can’t stop staring at herself. She hasn’t—that’s never happened before. And it’s...they’re...

Zoey draws in a trembling breath, feeling like the world has shifted out from under her. She stumbles back until she hits the bed, grabbing at her shirt with one hand, covering her mouth with the other. 

Rumi and Mira are with her in less than a second, both positioned on either side of her, arms wrapping around her. Rumi murmurs into her temple, “It’s okay, you’re okay. It’s okay, Zoey.”

“We’ll figure it out together,” Mira is whispering, voice just as soft. “Whatever it means, we’ll figure it out.”

Zoey has never felt more afraid in her life.

Somewhere, distantly, the universe splinters a little more. A new crack branches out from the main split, tearing open the world.

Somewhere, distantly, there’s a hollow that gets a little smaller.

They don’t go away.

If anything, they just get worse, because Mira was right—it is their fault that she has wrinkles already, and that fate is no longer spared from Zoey, who has spent almost all of her life laughing and grinning when she’s with them. It terrifies her, but Rumi and Mira are persistent, and they manage to drag her out of the depths of her fears more often than not.

Zoey has spent her entire life with certainties. She would never die, she would always find them, they would always come back to her. The length between was never static, it always differed, but it was always there. She always found them. And now they’ve started to find her, they’ve started to remember, they’ve stayed them.

And Zoey has stayed Zoey.

So many things have shifted and changed in just the last few forevers that it’s enough to leave her dizzy and off-balance. Zoey was beyond excited when they found her the second time, and then the third and the fourth and fifth and so on, but it’s different. It’s never been like this before, and they never used to remember her before, and now there’s...

This. Whatever this is.

Zoey hates waiting, but she’d do it without question, and she always has. She knows that Mira and Rumi will be there in the end, and so she can handle it, she’s able to stomach it and swallow down the hurt and the pain, especially with the last few times. She’s never had to not know—she’s always, always known that Rumi and Mira would come back, that she’d find them, and then that they’d find her, but this is something that has never happened before, and it’s not something that can be chalked up to Rumi and Mira just being stubborn and bending the rules of the universe.

This is permanent. 

It has to be. Zoey gets more and more wrinkles, and she starts finding sun spots on her body, and deep in the back of her head, she knows that they’re not going to go away. Her body has never gotten old before. When Mira and Rumi leave, is Zoey just going to be left with this? Will it disappear with them? That’s never happened before, and she knows it won’t end like that, but she doesn’t know how it ends.

She doesn’t know how to end. She’s never gotten the chance to follow Rumi and Mira to wherever it is they go before they come back, not even back when Zoey first broke the universe to get them back. It’s never been something her body has known how to do, and the idea of it suddenly learning makes her sick to her stomach. 

Mira and Rumi keep assuring her that they’ll be there with her, that they’re not going anywhere, that she has them until whatever happens happens, and Zoey believes them—of course she believes them. That doesn’t stop her mind from spinning every time she catches sight of herself in the mirror, unable to recognise parts of herself for the first time in her life. It’s not like she’s unrecognisable, Zoey thinks. It’s just that she’s not how she always has been.

She’s different enough for her to notice. 

Zoey stares at herself now, at the lines around her eyes, and is terrified.

She doesn’t have a soul, not like Rumi and Mira. She gave hers up. Where is she going to go? It can’t be with them, and that’s the part that scares her. She’s been without them, she knows, she’s spent so much of her life waiting, but what happens when it becomes forever?

Zoey turns away from the mirror, slinking into their living room. She settles on the couch between Mira and Rumi, buries her way into their arms, and holds them as tight as she can. When she starts to cry, they both hold her even closer.

There are only so many forevers that a person can spend before the cracks in the universe start to show up on them, too. Little lines, fragments, tears in the foundation. People are not built to be splintered, not like the universe.

People are not meant to be hollowed out and made into a vessel of waiting.

Somewhere, there’s a hollow in the world that gets smaller. 

“You guys live like this?” Zoey miserably asks, face-down in bed. 

She’s been waking up for the past few days with an aching back, and she’s only just now pieced together that it’s because she’s—she’s getting old. It’s so unbelievable and absurd to her that she can’t help but laugh about it, almost genuinely stunned when the pieces click in her head. She’s getting old. And Mira and Rumi have just been trucking through this like it’s nothing? Zoey swears to god that it’s going to kill her, because how is it possible to wake up from a good, peaceful rest and be in pain first thing in the morning?

Mira has the audacity to laugh at her, but she soothes the insult by gently rubbing Zoey’s back, kneading out some of the tension. “Yup. Welcome to getting old, babe.”

“Hate it,” Zoey mutters, which makes Rumi laugh at her this time. Like Mira, Rumi immediately makes it up to her by scratching her nails through Zoey’s hair. “How do you guys deal with this?”

Rumi snorts. “As if your thing is any better. It’s just aches and pains, Zo.”

“Misery and suffering,” Zoey helpfully corrects.

“As if waiting isn’t misery and suffering,” Mira teases. “You’re stronger than this, Zoey, I swear. You’re big and brave and tough and scary. You can make it through having some creaky bones.”

Zoey laughs now, tilting her head back so she can shoot Rumi a grin. It takes her twisting her head over her shoulder so she can do the same thing for Mira, feeling the ache in her chest get a little lighter at the way they both smile at her, so soft and gentle that it makes her dizzy.

She shifts until she’s actually sitting up, back pressed to the pillows. “Does it just get worse than this? Like—I’m asking seriously!” Zoey laughs, rolling her eyes at Mira and Rumi’s matching grins. “I’m being serious! I don’t know!”

Rumi shrugs, giving a wave of her hand. “It kind of depends. I mean, kind of?” she offers. “You do get a little more achy when you get older, but it doesn’t hurt constantly. Not really.”

“Just depends how your body works,” Mira agrees with a hum, settling her head down on Zoey’s knee. “I had bad knees last time. Rumi gets a lot of wrist pain, usually. You escaped that last time, though.”

“Barely,” Rumi laughs, coming to plant her head atop Zoey’s. “Maybe you’ll escape all of it. The back pain is just a fluke. It’ll totally be gone by morning. You’re better than it.”

Zoey snorts, closing her eyes, letting the two of them hold her. The warmth from the both of them eases away most of her pain, though if she focuses a little too hard she can feel it lingering, right below the surface. It’s different from the pain she usually feels, Zoey thinks. It’s more tangible than the pain that comes from losing them. That sort of pain is near-agonising, and it settles deep inside of her bones, twisting and writhing and constricting until she’s almost delirious from how bad it hurts.

This feels more real. It’s dull and constant, but it isn’t overwhelming, it’s just...irritating. It’s definitely not the excruciating agony she’s generally used to, and Zoey really shouldn’t be complaining that much about it, but she can’t help but whine and grouse over it, because she’s never had to deal with this before, and it’s ridiculous. 

Rumi presses a few dozen kisses to her temple, and Zoey can feel the way Rumi’s lips curve up into a smile. “Love you, Zo. I promise you’re going to survive the back pain.”

“You’re gonna make it,” Mira easily agrees, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee. “Somehow, I know. It’s a really tough battle, but I think we’re gonna pull through.”

“Maybe,” Zoey grumbles, grinning at the laughter that gets her from both of them. “We’ll see. I don’t have high hopes. You know what would fix me, though?”

That’s all she needs to say before she’s being peppered with a million kisses, laughing until she’s nearly dizzy from the onslaught. 

Somehow, the weight of the world shifts away from her, and everything seems a lot less terrifying when she has Mira and Rumi with her.

The hollow in the world gets smaller.

“Does it usually go by this fast for you?” Zoey asks, quietly, looking down at her hands. The rasp of her voice is noticeable, and it makes her laugh as soon as she remembers that she has that now. “I feel like I blinked and I was just...like this.”

Mira tips her head back from her chair by the window, grinning so hard that it has to make her face hurt. “Welcome to getting old.”

Zoey rolls her eyes. “You have to stop saying that to me.”

“Not my fault it’s true,” Mira tells her with a shrug, turning back to the window so she can get right back to sunbathing. “You’re ancient, Zo.”

Rumi giggles from the living room, and Zoey catches sight of her setting her book down, tented over her chest. “She was ancient before this!”

Zoey rolls her eyes again, laughing as she ducks her head, propping her wrist against her temple. “You guys are so mean to me, did you know that?”

“Never have been mean ever,” Mira helpfully says. “Not in my nature.”

“Don’t make me come over there,” Rumi threatens, then scoffs. “‘Not in my nature’, she says. You tripped me last week! Down the porch steps! You—you know I get dizzy easily!”

Mira cackles now, throwing her head back. Zoey replays the memory with ease, especially because she had been Mira’s next target. Admittedly, it had been deserved—Zoey teamed up with Rumi to steal all of Mira’s favourite sweaters, and, obviously, she retaliated. But it was deserved this time around, so Zoey can hardly pick a fight about it.

She still grins at the way Rumi clearly does not have that mindset, immediately sputtering and scoffing and arguing, laughing at how Mira blatantly ignores her and continues to snicker under her breath, preening at both the sun and Rumi’s sputtering. 

“The nicest ever,” Mira continues, sing-songing. “You wouldn’t know how that works, Ru. You’re evil. Inherently. And actually, you know what?” Mira suddenly says, shifting to jab a finger in Zoey’s direction. “So are you!”

Zoey gasps, planting her hand over her heart. “What? Me? How could I possibly be evil? I’ve never done anything wrong! And—and you can’t be mean!” Zoey rushes out through a fit of giggles, “I’m getting old! You have to be nice!”

“People usually get old!” Mira shoots back, laughing. “You’re just—you were a special case!”

“What was it you said?” Rumi asks, head on the edge of the couch now, crooked grin on full display. “Something like—like ‘really good skincare’? How’s that going for you now, babe?”

Zoey rolls her eyes, puffing out her cheeks. “It’s not my fault my skincare routine from ten billion years ago stopped working. What do you want from me, Ru?”

Rumi, ever the way with words, sticks out her tongue. 

Zoey, equally as talented, sticks out her tongue right back. 

Mira is the one who snorts, snickering again. “Super mature.”

“Watch yourself,” Zoey teases, shooting her a grin. “Keep being mean to me and you’ll be next.”

“Oh no,” Mira laughs, waving a hand. “What ever will I do?”

Zoey grins so hard it hurts her face, shaking her head as she goes back to what she had been doing, shuffling through pictures and mementos. She catches sight of Rumi flipping back over on the couch to keep reading her book, watches as Mira turns the rest of the way back to the window, clearly pleased with the amount of sun she’s getting.

The afternoon is spent quietly, and Zoey thinks she’s forgotten to be afraid for nearly a decade now.

The hollow in the world caves in.

Zoey knows she’s dying.

Out of everything she’s experienced before, she has never experienced this. She can feel it. 

“I don’t want to go,” she whispers, arms hooked around Rumi’s shoulder, face buried into Mira’s chest. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

“We’ll find you,” Mira whispers back, voice raspy with age, gentle and soft as ever. “We always do, don’t we?”

“Always,” Rumi agrees, one hand soothingly stroking through her hair, the other resting on her back. “We’ll come back to you. Can’t get away from us for too long.”

Zoey laughs, but it comes out watery and broken and exhausted. She’s never felt so tired in her entire life, so heavy, so...weighted, as if it’s an impossible effort to keep herself breathing, to focus on staying alive. She swallows around an awful lump in her throat, hating the laboured breaths she can feel echo through her chest.

“You’ll be together,” Zoey murmurs, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. “Promise me. You have to be.”

Mira kisses the top of her head, and Zoey tries not to sob when she feels the tremor of the action. “Promise. We’ll be together. We’ll—we’ll be together, and we’ll find you, alright? Just like always.”

Rumi holds her a little tighter, but the grasp around her is weak. “I promise, Zoey. We’ll be together, and we’ll come back to you. Just like always. You don’t have to worry about us. We’ll be there.”

Zoey lets the words settle in her head, wrapped around her mind. They’re softer than the world itself, sweeter, warmer. Easier to focus on than breathing.

“I love you,” she whispers, so, so tired. “I love you. I love you.”

“We love you too, Zoey,” Rumi and Mira say, so perfectly in sync with each other that it should make Zoey laugh, that she should tease them for it, that she should come up with some sort of playful jab.

Instead, Zoey closes her eyes.

She saw Peaches again, just once. He had been with the tabby and the orange cat, and they had been chasing each other around. For a second, he had looked at her and meowed, and then he went right back to launching himself at the other two cats. The three of them bounded off after that, disappearing into the summer air as if they were never there in the first place. It felt less like a goodbye, less like the first time, and more like a memory. An offering, a familiar greeting, a promise:

See? I’m okay, I’m okay, and I’m happy and safe, and I have them, and I wanted to come back and tell you that.

She always looked for him after, spent hours out hoping to catch sight of him, but she never did. It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. All she could feel was happy for him for finding them, even after all the time it took.

The universe is not cruel. 

It can be convinced. It understands love. It knows what it takes for a person, so small and fragile, to tear apart the very threads that make it up. Such an act of devotion is impossible to not resonate with. 

The universe is not cruel. 

When the hollow in the depth of the world is filled for the first time in the span of the entirety of the world, it splinters again.

The universe is not cruel.

It splinters further.

Just a little.

Just enough.

Her name is Celine.

Which, obviously. Zoey is way too aware of who she is, and she’s really excited, and, okay, she needs to calm down, because she’s trying really hard not to freak out in the car and ask the millions of questions that are going through her head. And she has a lot of questions. A lot. Like, demons are real? And she’s supposed to hunt them? With her voice? And there are two others who she’s supposed to—what, form a girl group with? 

And, okay, maybe that was literally what she auditioned for, but she didn’t think she’d actually get picked! She didn’t send in her audition as a joke, or whatever, but Zoey definitely didn’t think that it would ever actually go anywhere, especially because she literally didn’t even live in Korea until, like, ten hours ago. 

The idea of all of this is sort of terrifying and scary and also really cool, and Zoey can’t help but bounce her leg. She figures it’s the closest thing to a compromise that she can muster up, because there’s really just no world in which she doesn’t freak out just a little, because Jang Celine is literally driving the car she also happens to be in. And that’s fucking crazy, and Zoey is still wrapping her mind around it. She’s taking it seriously, she is, but she can’t exactly shove down an entire lifetime of being totally obsessed with the Sunlight Sisters and pretend like this isn’t something she’s dreamed about.

Well, it doesn’t usually end with her being recruited to hunt demons, but this is just as good. Better, even. 

And it makes a lot of sense, too, Zoey thinks.

The honmoon is something that she immediately recognises, even if she can’t really explain how or why. She’s always felt something around her, but she had always just figured it was her imagination, or maybe she was just really sensitive to the temperature changing, or—or whatever. But the honmoon makes all the weird, unexplainable feelings in the back of her mind make sense, and it feels kind of validating to finally understand where they’ve all come from.

The drive to the compound doesn’t take very long in all actuality; it’s only about an hour at best, though Zoey swears it’s been at least fifteen since she got in the car. She stares out the window, leg bouncing uncontrollably, her heart pounding in her chest. The honmoon buzzes around her a little, she can see the blue waves ebbing along the street as they drive.

Zoey distantly has the thought that maybe she should be freaking out a little more about all of this, but it’s difficult for her to really find a reason why.

It just...makes sense. It’s kind of scary and terrifying and weird, yeah, but it also makes a lot of sense. There’s always been this weird feeling in her chest that she’s had ever since she was little, one that she could never explain, and this sort of seems like the answer to all of the questions she’s never been able to have answered for her. Like, why does she feel like she’s being pulled somewhere she’s never been? Or, why does she feel like there’s just something missing in her? Not even in her life, but in her, as a person? 

Zoey lets out a slow breath, but it quickly gets caught in her throat when she realises that Celine is slowing the car down, which means—they’re totally at the compound, and she’s not even prepared for that. Zoey had wanted to get here so badly that she didn’t even actually mentally prepare herself for what she was going to say to the other two girls she’s supposed to save the world with. It seems like a pretty important speech that she really should have prepared on the way, but she didn’t, and now the car is parked, and...

Zoey watches as Celine looks over at her, giving her an expectant kind of expression that says more than enough. Zoey nods back, quickly unbuckling her seatbelt, scrambling out of the car. She almost slams the door shut on her own hand because she remembers at the last second that she needs to grab her bag, wincing as she nearly stumbles over her own feet after that.

She needs to calm down.

Zoey breathes out, clenching her hands into fists as she takes another few deep breaths. She can handle this. She can do this. She’s going to be totally fine, everything is going to be okay, and she’s not going to accidentally freak either of the other girls out by being too weird or too loud or too much.

Zoey dutifully trails after Celine, who guides them up an incline, further up into the hills where the compound is settled. She shifts her bag from arm to arm, eventually settling on carrying it by the handle in one hand, her nerves nearly eating her alive by the time she can see a hanok in the distance, and then—

Zoey actually stumbles on her feet this time, blinking rapidly as she takes in the sight of the two girls ahead of her. Zoey doesn’t mean to, but she finds herself walking past Celine, feeling a little breathless as the other two girls make their way to meet her halfway.

Before she even knows it, she’s standing face-to-face with them both, kind of lightheaded. 

“Hi,” Zoey says, forcing herself to speak, trying to snap out of whatever weird haze she just got thrown into. “I’m Zoey.”

The first girl, the one with a long, purple braid, lights up and shoots her a crooked grin. “Hi, Zoey. I’m Rumi. This is Mira,” Rumi says, head tipping to the side in a clear gesture.

The other girl, Mira, just stares for another few seconds, her gaze heavy and intense. And then, after what feels like nothing short of a literal lifetime, she says, “Hi, Zoey.” 

Zoey stares at them both for a little, and she only feels less bad about it because they’re kind of staring back. It has to be a hunter thing, she decides. Celine told her all about how they'd pretty much be interconnected with each other, how they’d basically be the equivalent of soulmates, how it might feel a little weird at first.

It doesn’t feel weird at all, Zoey decides.

Really, she thinks, the weird pull in her chest shuts up for the first time in her whole life, like it settles and calms down, and it almost feels like Zoey can breathe. Well, full breaths, at least. 

It’s kind of funny. Zoey looks at them and feels like she’s known them for forever, even though she doesn’t actually know literally anything at all about them. But Rumi’s wide, crooked grin and Mira’s intense eyes are enough to make her feel oddly at peace. All of her nerves melt away, and she suddenly feels like she’s right where she’s always been meant to be. 

After a second, Mira shifts, head inclining slightly toward her bag. “Do you need help with that? Rumi can show you around the hanok. We set up your room for you. If it’s bad, blame her.”

“What?” Rumi demands, sputtering. “I—that’s not even true! Don’t believe her,” Rumi immediately says, grinning so brightly in Zoey’s direction that she kind of feels like she’s being lit up by the sun itself. “She tried giving you two pillows, not four.”

“No one needs four pillows,” Mira easily says, her lips tugging upward in what must be the beginnings of a real smile, and it’s enough to make Zoey’s heart stutter in her chest. “You’re spoiled.”

Rumi rolls her eyes, shaking her head. “Sorry, Zoey. Do you need help with your bags?”

Zoey laughs, shaking her head as she sways back and forth on her feet, a restless kind of energy thrumming through her. “No, um, I’m okay! Thank you though, like, seriously. They’re not that heavy. Really, I’m kind of, like...buzzy from the drive here. And the train. And the airport.”

Mira snorts, giving her a look. “Have you slept at all in, like, the last forty-eight hours?”

“Dude,” Zoey miserably says with another shake of her head, dragging her free hand down her face as she laughs again. “Honestly? Probably not.”

“Good thing you have four pillows,” Rumi says with another crooked grin, making a gesture to the hanok. “Come on. Mira can make lunch, I’ll help you settle in. Celine’s probably going to be gone for the rest of the night to work on stuff and get everything figured out, but we can talk about some of it now, if you want.”

Zoey jogs up behind the both of them until they part slightly, allowing her a spot in the middle of them. She almost giggles at how nice they are. It’s not like she didn’t expect them to be nice, it’s just that she didn’t expect them to feel like...

This. 

Kind of like home, Zoey thinks. A home she’s never been to before, but a home she can recognise as hers almost immediately. 

By the time they get to the hanok, Mira has somehow managed to wrestle her bag out of her hands without Zoey even noticing, and Rumi is busy chirping about the layout of the hanok and what rooms are which, where everyone else already sleeps. Zoey tries her best to commit it to memory, but she’s too busy listening to the way Rumi and Mira laugh, how they talk, how they both look at her with the same look she’s sure she’s giving them.

Kind of like Zoey might be their home, too. Maybe. In a weird, hunter way.

Zoey breathes in, grinning as she takes a step into the hanok, her heart hammering out of her chest.

“Tell me everything,” Zoey decides, watching as Rumi and Mira both turn back to beam at her, as if that was the right answer.

And they do. Mira makes lunch, Rumi shows her around, and then they pile out into the kitchen, where Mira sits in the sun while Rumi sits across from her, with Zoey in the middle.

She spends most of lunch looking at them.

Zoey doesn’t know what she’s looking for, not really, but by the time they’re done eating, she’s convinced she’s found it.