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English
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Part 1 of Anon Trixie's Stories
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2025-09-14
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1,911
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1/1
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Killing Innocence

Anonymous

Summary:

Celine never gave Rumi any toys as a kid.

That affected Rumi deeply.

Notes:

Sooo... I had a thought, and I needed to get it out of me.

No major character death or injuries, but I don't think there's much comfort to be found here. Might be heavy angst, idk, you let me know if that tag is accurate, lol.

Enjoy? Or maybe cry? Whichever works.

 

Edit: So I lied and added in Mira and Zoey as the comfort. Y'all don't have to just suffer. Lucky you.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

"Celine?"

 

There's a stuffed teddy bear that sits on her bed.

 

Her eyes are lost in the plush bear's own, sewn with a care and dedication. With a love of toys and childhood whimsy.

 

She remembers the elderly woman who had given it to her.

 

("You look like someone who really needs it."

 

Not a single penny spent from the boundless wealth in her pocket, hundreds available at her finger tips.

 

She had insisted, of course- of course Rumi insisted she pay for the delicate looking thing, if she was gonna take it. Plain as day was the hand stitched care this little old woman had put into the bear, the stand a few feet away from where Rumi had sat upon a bench to rest, full of the woman's work. Of colorful kids toys made of clay, felt, cotton, and more. Rumi had only afforded a single moment of a wistful glance, yearning, longing.

 

For what, she can't fully grasp.

 

Or perhaps she refuses to understand it.

 

Rumi knows but refuses to touch.

 

Maybe she didn't need to. With those sad, knowing eyes the lady had given her, folding Rumi's hands over the plush toy. Her hand lingered, the warmth seeped deeply into Rumi's skin. It made Rumi's hands begin to tremble, her grip on the bear a hesitant quiver one moment, then tight the next. Gripping so harshly she was afraid she may pop a stitch in the delicate work of this sweet woman.

 

Her hands still clasped Rumi's together, so she could feel the torrent of emotion in her body.

 

Rumi refused to let it show on her face too.

 

But the woman didn't need to see the tears that burned so fiercely behind her eyes. She just knew.

 

The elderly lady gave her a weary and worn by the years smile. Shaking with age, but true and genuine.

 

"I don't need the money, not as much as you need an act of kindness, deary."

 

The lady did not flinch when Rumi tore her hands away from that far too knowing warmth. Did not condemn her for Rumi's impolite manners, and showed only as much care in her eyes as one could for a stranger.

 

Rumi ran away from the scene, guilt gnawing heavy in her gut and on her bones.)

 

"Do Hunters kill all demons?"

 

There wasn't anything particularly special about the bear. It was a regular brown, black button eyes, a blue bow, the perfect size for a child to cuddle up to.

 

.....

 

Rumi ran her fingers over the soft cotton of a leg, lingering with an absentminded drag of her forefinger back and forth. Thumbed at the seam, the thread nowhere to be seen. The seam itself nearly invisible. She assumes it's a ladder stitch, an intricate, uniquely handmade stitch unable to be recreated by a factory machine.

 

Rumi imagines, for a second, what it would be like to have had this exact bear when she was merely a child.

 

Would she have looked at the bear with stars in her eyes when she was first given the toy made of clouds and comfort?

 

Would she have had a tea party with the bear?

 

Whispered frivolous secrets into it's ears when no one was around?

 

Sang lullabies so it could fall asleep with her?

 

Would she have sat it in a swing at a playground to push it higher and higher?

 

Maybe bandaged his knee when he had inevitably fallen to the ground after too hard of a push with sincere apologies falling from her childish mouth?

 

Held him in her arms when she cried at night to the sounds of thunderous storms and a weary mind wrought about from the seemingly miniscule problems the imagination of a kid would find to be a treacherous endeavor?

 

Named him? 

 

Would she-...

 

...

 

Would she have taken a purple marker to his stuffed cotton arms-

 

Would Celine have taken her best friend away from her after that?

 

"Yes."

 

Rumi pulls her hand away from the bear. Mostly untouched, pristine in the corner of her bed where she had propped it against the headboard since the very first day she got it. 

 

She stared, and she stared.

 

She stared so long her eyes began to sting with a desert dryness. Creativity, awe, and galaxies that swirl with curious twinkles in the night sky.

 

They elude her time and time again. No matter her will to not blink. To not blink because maybe she would miss the answer freely given from the bear.

 

Blinking feels like a tragedy that breaks her heart when the lids of her eyes betray her.

 

She ignores the urge to pull it close, to bury it into her chest, to cry and ruin what that little old woman had so lovingly made with her too warm hands that had craddled her too cold ones.

 

She doesn't give the bear a name.

 

Doesn't whisper secrets.

 

Doesn't talk about the hard day she had. 

 

Doesn't have a tea party. 

 

Doesn't put a condemning purple marker to it's arms.

 

She ignores the wet warmth she can feel cascade down the curves of her cheeks.

 

"So..."

 

Her hands are claws, tearing into the sheets, so near and yet so far away from the stuffed plush bear, with black button eyes and a child innocence built into it's frame, cotton stuffed with whimsy and the wonders of a childhood Rumi is too late to have.

 

She thinks about the one purple marker she has sitting idly in her closet. Unused. It's pathetic why she has it. She's had it ever since she was a kid.

 

In all actuality.

 

Rumi had been waiting for the day, since she was three and doodling colorful scribbles on a piece of paper, that she was finally given a toy. Not bought, not owned, but gifted and given to her. 

 

Celine never gave her any toys.

 

Still, she held onto that purple marker.

 

She held onto it even as shame ate away at her organs and crawled up her throat like a vile, living creature at too young of an age.

 

Something in her just couldn't let it go. 

 

Not when she had moved to the penthouse.

 

Not even as the patterns began to constrict and pulse under her skin and ate away at her flesh.

 

She stands on weak legs and heads to the closet. 

 

Her hands tremble as she opens the meager closet door. Something small. Unusually small for how big everything else in this house is. 

 

It's nice to crawl into when her skin feels too loose and her mind feels untethered from reality.

 

There. A purple capped marker in a cup of silly, colorful, wonderfully designed pens gifted to her by fans. An odd gift, but she cherishes each and every one of them. 

 

The white body of the marker, the purple cap. It stands out with it's plain, dull design. Seeing it had always made something warm, maybe hope, spark in her heart.

 

Something innocent and naive.

 

...

 

.....

 

She picks it up.

 

 

 

And snaps it in half. 

 

 

 

The purple ink bleeds onto the skin of her palms. It's dark. It almost looks black. She ignores the pulsing glow of her patterns scrawling precariously down to her wrists.

 

Seeing the marker this time only filled her with dread, painfully constricting her heart.

 

She walks to her trash bin and throws the pieces into the mess of papers. The ink stains, and it spreads. And spreads.

 

"Everything that has patterns?"

 

 

 

 

Zoey's the one to find her, inconsolable, patterns glowing a painful bruised purple, in what the girls have deemed as Rumi's Desolation Closet. The place Rumi crawls into when she'd rather wallow in her dangerous thoughts and feelings because of a misplaced guilt about burdening her girlfriends when she's spiraling like this. Luckily she resorts to this instead of something else. Something worse. 

 

But this usually still indicates a pretty extreme episode.

 

And she knows the extent of it is bad because of how loud Rumi's wailing had been.

 

Mira's not far behind her, it seems, because before Zoey can even reach her hand in or speak a single word to let Rumi know I'm here, baby, what's wrong? Mira has her words spoken first, crouched beside Zoey.

 

"Rumi, come here, let us hold you."

 

Rumi startles at Mira's voice, a single gleaming golden eye in the dark darts up, pinning on Mira and Zoey's concerned faces. The previously slitted pupil is now blown wide, shimmering with an endless fall of tears Mira and Zoey can barely track in the shadows that shroud her. Rumi's eyes flicker down to their outstretched hands, the back up to their imploring, love sick worry. The tears well larger, so big and hurt.

 

Rumi leaps out of her little corner in the closet, barreling both the girls onto the ground, her arms wrapped tightly around their waists. She's sobbing a slew of incoherent words, slurred and jumbled together into the crevice of Mira's neck. They only pick up a few words. Something about a purple marker and toys. 

 

Mira shares a concerned glance with Zoey, neither really understanding what Rumi's trying to say, but they both rub their hands consolingly on her limbs as they slowly sit themselves upright. Her back, her arms, her side. All shivering with the weight of her emotions as she tries to calm herself. They coo and they ignore the animal panic that beats it's wings very softly in their chests. Zoey ignores the sting of tears. Mira let's go of any assumptions and hunches she may have that might make her wish she punched Celine harder. 

 

Rumi finally calms enough to get the words out that the girls are finally able to understandable.

 

And when the pieces fall together, like a child's jigsaw puzzle, it breaks their hearts in half. 

 

Their poor, sweet Rumi...

 

They pull her in close and they can feel a few tears join Rumi's own. Mira has never wanted to punch Celine again so badly.

 

Zoey promises aloud that they're going to paint patterns onto their bodies after this. As a fun little spa night, 'it's called self-care!', or whatever Zoey said.

 

It makes Rumi giggle fondly, if a little wet and weak.

 

And they do.

 

Not long after that night of tearful appreciation and messy paint stains, Zoey and Mira come home a few days later with lines etched on the underside of their wrists, mirroring one another, that imitate Rumi's own scars. One with purple lines and on the other, a mimicry of the iridescent color of her current patterns.

 

Rumi keeps them cuddled close for hours, tracing the raised lines of their newly acquired marks they purposely went out and bought for her. They're trapped, willfully, on the couch until their bones creak with disuse when Mira carries Rumi's sleeping form to bed, Zoey close behind with a stretch of her limbs. They crawl into bed beside Rumi for a night of snuggles.

 

And after arriving home from a work trip out of country, Rumi finds patterns sewn into her teddy bear, found in the exact same place she had left it on the bed. Unusually reminiscent of Mira's work.

 

And with a closer look, a few of the patterns have wobbly stitching. Zoey must have wanted to help...

 

Rumi feels happy, overwhelmed tears as she picks the stuffed bear up and hugs it tightly to her chest.

 

Rumi has never felt more loved.

Notes:

Hey! Hope you enjoyed!

(Had a TikTok edit I made linked that compliments this story so well, but it opens into a DM, which I don't like, so you can find it on my account @soaringtears the baby Rumi one, if y'all are that interested enough to watch it.)

Also, The ending was rushed, because the comfort was not planned, lol.

Comments are very much Appreciated (if you enjoyed it enough to leave one)! 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

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