Chapter Text
Rumi lay in her soft bed, propped against a mound of pillows, body aching from the fight that had put her on her back. Her ankle had a line of fire running across it where the stitches were, a dull throbbing pervading the muscles surrounding the injury. Her head pounded in rhythm with her heart, and her neck twinged every time she moved. It had been a rough fight, crueler on her body than usual. Why there had been a fight at all, now that the Honmoon was sealed, was another problem to deal with.
But she couldn’t think about that right now.
Because there he was.
He was back. He was as alive as he had ever been. He looked much like he had during their awful confrontation the night of the Idol Awards—his human form intact but overlaid with rippling violet patterns. And he was sitting opposite her bed, in the far corner of the room, careful to keep his distance from her. His face was blank with shame, eyes trained on the ground in front of him.
She had no clue how or why he had been able to come back. All that was evident for now was the remains of his suffering—bruises, cuts, burns, a hollowing in his face and body that spoke of hunger, an exhausted numbness in his eyes that spoke of becoming deadened to pain.
What on earth had they done to him?
“Jinu, what happened to you?” she breathed, heart squeezing painfully when he still wouldn't look her full in the face.
“Gwi-Ma wasn’t too happy with me for breaking my contract with him for a Hunter," he said, his beautiful voice raw. She had missed his voice, all these many months, and she savored the sound of it now, scared she would wake and it would all be an all-too-vivid dream. But her dreams never did his voice justice, not like this. "So he made sure I wasn’t all the way gone," he continued, "because he wasn’t done punishing me.”
Rumi sucked in a breath. “How?”
“I don’t know how he did it. I was just ash, and then my body put itself back together in the underworld. It took a long time before I was whole again. And then…he…”
Jinu didn’t seem to have words for what happened to him. Not ones that he could say. And so, heart heavy, Rumi continued.
“How did you get out?”
“The Saja Boys regenerated the normal way a little after I did. I don’t know how, but they managed to break me out last night.” His expression filled with a bleak emptiness. “How long…since that night, how long has it—“
“Five and a half months,” Rumi said softly. And then understanding dawned. “But I felt your soul leave me about four and a half months ago.”
She hadn’t known what was going on, when it happened. She had panicked, clutching at her chest, as her sword summoned itself without her calling for it for the first time. The new sword--the result of Jinu's sacrifice. It had glowed blue, and so had the center of her chest--an iridescence she usually only saw when she sang. The comforting warmth of Jinu’s soul pulled out from within her and the sword like a cell splitting, like a galaxy expanding, like a child emerging from a placenta. It had made her ribs creak and stretch, her lungs burn, her eyes stream. It had hurt. The blue light had hovered in front of her, ghostly and beautiful, and then dove out of sight, down, down into the ground.
She had thought that meant he was gone. Gone in every possible way.
It had broken her absolutely.
That night had been sleepless, hollow. But there was no one she could tell.
Four and a half months. She didn’t know whether to ask or not about what had happened in those four and a half months that made Jinu look like he’d had everything inside of him scraped out and destroyed. He’d always looked troubled, before, but this was a new kind of darkness for him. He carried himself like he knew his body to be fragile, like he was waiting for a blow that never came. Sitting on the pouf in the corner, his shoulders were hunched and his hands tight on the edge of the seat. It wasn’t the fluid, devil-may-care posture that had made her fume and sneak glances at him at the same time. It was the posture of a kicked dog.
He wasn't the same Jinu who had brushed off his shoulder at her, smiling crookedly. Who had grinned beneath her sword and called her strong, a come-hither glint in his eyes. Who had grabbed her wrist when she turned to go, and immediately stammered his way through an apology. It wasn't even the same Jinu who had given himself up for her.
This new Jinu had suffered in ways her human mind could not comprehend. And that was a direct consequence of him throwing himself into the fire for her.
Her heart sank like a stone.
“Jinu, I’m so sorry,” she breathed.
His eyes snapped to her face, fully meeting her eyes for the first time. His face was alight with something almost like anger. “What could you possibly have to apologize for?”
She hadn’t expected this reaction at all. Her face heated as she grasped for words that felt adequate. “I'm sorry that—sorry that you died. For me. And then it still wasn’t over. And it hurt you. And that I couldn’t save you. And that it’s my fault that this happened to you.” Her voice quivered dangerously on the last few words, and she stopped, eyes pricking with sudden tears.
His eyes bright with something, Jinu shook his head. He sat up, shoulders straightening. “Don’t you ever say that, Rumi. I wanted to save you and so I did. And it was the first good choice I made in four hundred years. And it was worth it." His eyes slid to the floor again, as if she were too bright to look at, as if meeting her eyes for too long would burn him . “Anything that came after was no more than I deserved for everything I did.”
“No.” The word shot out of her with more force than she knew she was capable of. “You did not deserve whatever he did to you. You did not.” But he shook his head.
“Rumi, you already know what I did. What I am. I’m a betrayer and a liar and a killer and I poison everything I touch. I’m the one who should be sorry.” He said the words like they were wrenched from him against his will. Like he was too weak to hold them inside of himself anymore. His downcast eyes were brimming with tears. “And I am. I’m sorry.” His voice hitched. “I’m sorry and I hate what I did and I hate that I lied and I hate that I hurt you and I hate—“
“Jinu.”
She knew he had to hear that she meant this. He fell silent, the blank look of misery on his face again. He looked as if he were collapsing into himself. Like he was falling. She wanted, more than anything, to cup his face in her hands, to pull his head against her chest. But he was so far away. And he still couldn't look at her.
“Jinu, look at me.”
Reluctantly, he did, his eyes wet and face hot with self-abasement.
“I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.”
He could not have looked more stunned if she had slapped him. A shudder ran through his body, and she saw a treacherous tear slide down his cheek. She refused to break eye contact with him.
“I don’t forgive you because you hate yourself, or because you said sorry enough times. I forgive you because you’re a person who made a mistake and you wish you could take it back. I’m no different, Jinu. My friends forgave me for lying to them for a decade. You don’t get forgiveness based on whether you deserve it or not, you get it based on whether the person you hurt decides to give it. And this is me giving it to you.”
He was still motionless as a statue, tension etched in every line of his body. But he was no longer folded in on himself like he was bracing for collapse, and there was something like hope in his face where the awful blankness had been.
A line stretched taut between them. She wanted to comfort him, to reinforce her words with a touch the way she had the night that they sang on the roof. And he was here, solid and real and living and in her bedroom, of all places.
They’d barely touched, before. She had no clue what he would do if she tried.
And as much as this was unexplored territory, she knew Jinu would never move first. He didn’t think himself worthy of her affection, no matter how much he craved it. He wouldn’t ask her to touch him. He wouldn’t dare.
So she would have to reach out.
“Come here,” she said softly, extending her arms towards him from where she lay propped against the pillows.
His eyes widened. He hadn’t expected that. At all.
He tensed in his chair in the corner for a moment, but then stood with some of his old sinuous grace to walk over and stand at the side of the bed.
He paused there for a full ten seconds, shame and hope warring on his face as he looked down at her, his breathing shallow.
“Jinu.” Rumi waited for him to make eye contact with her, then filled her voice with every ounce of longing she had in her. “Come here. Please.”
His resolve wavered. He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, looking at her like a stray dog being offered a hand of kindness—half longing, half disbelief. She reached out, tentative and slow, and brushed her fingers across his cheek, over a half-healed bruise.
Something in his expression shattered, and in less than a breath he was crumpled against her, his arms tight around her waist, clutching handfuls of her sweatshirt, his face buried in the crook of her neck, shaking like he would come apart if her arms weren’t around him.
He was crying, she realized, feeling his tears against her collarbone.
She cupped his neck in her hand, turning to press a kiss to the side of his head, in his hair, like it was the easiest and most natural thing in the world. And it was. He shivered and tightened his hold on her, a sob choking out of him. She wondered how long it had been since anyone had held him. How many years. How many centuries since someone had touched him at all without intending to cause pain. Her eyes stung and her vision blurred as she looked down at this boy, who had hurt her in ways she did not know she could be hurt. He had betrayed her trust. He had used her.
There was not a shred of anger or pain left when she looked at him.
She let herself cry, then.
She did not know how long they stayed like that. She stroked slow circles across his back, waiting for the hitching sobs to stop and his body to still. She could feel his heartbeat against her own. Every few minutes, he choked out that he was sorry, and she whispered through tears of her own that she forgave him, letting the words mean all the things she didn't know if she should say just yet. For now, those words were the most important ones.
After a long time, a couple of hours, maybe, a peace seemed to settle over him. He shifted, still breathing raggedly, to lay his head on her sternum, just over her heart. She carded a hand through his hair, running her fingernails along his scalp. He exhaled, the last of the tension leaving his body, and he melted against her completely. She began to hum, softly, their song from the roof that night. He joined in, his voice rough with exhaustion, but quickly began to slip into sleep. His voice dropped in and out of the melody.
"Sleep, Jinu" she whispered. "Go to sleep."
She clicked off the lamp. Good thing he was dressed comfortably. His head was heavy on her chest, his left arm wrapped securely around her waist, a handful of her sweatshirt clutched in his hand. His face in sleep was so young, vulnerable and tear-streaked and gentle in its expression.
Rumi settled down into the mattress, pulling a blanket gently over them both and adjusting her weight to best fall asleep. At the slight disturbance, Jinu stirred, one of his long legs tangling with her uninjured one. He murmured something unintelligible, a furrow entering his brow. Rumi smoothed it with her finger. Even his sleep would be painless, so long as it was up to her.
"Goodnight," she whispered.
There would be more to talk about tomorrow, she knew. But for tonight, she could finally rest.
And so could Jinu.