Please! Just read your snippet on when your grief stares back and I'm a massive dimension travel sucker! Has the trio been raised with stories of the dead Celine? Do they think "wait a sec, she kind of looks like..." And and I absolutely loved the comparisons to how Celine knows them, with the Mira hair thing and esp Zoey's calculations/analysis.
...do you have more? 👀
Dimension travel and Time travel are my absolute favorite flavour of au because they can be soooo good in the fix-it way but also in the angst way. I love them all to death.
And yes! they were trained and raised with stories of Celine! I don't think their canon counterparts actually got a super-duper lot of stories about Mi-yeong and Soo-min because I think it's a wound that never stopped bleeding for Celine. She was alone in her grief and with Rumi as a responsibility on top of that. Post-movie and post-reconciliation might be the first time Celine actually has the space and the environment necessary to actually start healing.
Soo-min and Mi-yeong, meanwhile, had each other after demon dad and Celine kicked it, so they'd have healed... better? I guess? It's very much a wound that never stopped hurting, theirs just stopped bleeding.
So yeah, they girls know a lot of stories, and they've seen the pictures, so they all recognize her (Zoey being the first to do so lol). They immediately assume demon at first, until she pulls her weapons out and they all just go "!!!???". That's when they start noticing everything wrong, like the gray hairs, the scars along her arms, the wrinkles in her face etc etc.
ANYWAYS Yeah! have some more because I love dimension travel so fucking much:
And then it just went out. That little light that shone so brightly in her gaze, shone of shock, confusion and overwhelming grief just... flickered out. Leaving no emotion, no hurt. It made her dark gaze look as endless as the cosmos and as cold as the night sky. It was as if their lover had walked away, hidden behind ice and just left her body behind. It wasn't violent or sudden. Mi-yeong could see the moment the light started to waver, could feel when the door slammed shut in this stranger's mind. She tried to force herself to say something- anything. Soo-min was frozen beside her, their girls were looking between them holding their breaths but Mi-yeong couldn't move. Her tongue was leaden in her mouth and her throat was dry. "I see." It hadn't changed. Over twenty years and her voice was the exact same as Mi-yeong remembered it. A gentle timbre that'd wash away uncertainty with the calm certainty of success. But it was still wrong. Cold, detached. Apathetic. Like she was measuring them and simply jotting down her observations. Like she had to. Like she couldn't remember the days they'd spent telling each other their deepest secrets and forgiving each other for their darkest sins. "Celine?" Soo-min found her voice before Mi-yeong could, but it was shaky at best. Celine-not-Celine nodded sharply, only once. Not unlike how she'd respond to an order from their mentor, back in the day. Mi-yeong felt lightheaded. "Yes." She responded, still in that monotone that made Mi-yeong's skin itch. "But not yours."
honestly feel free to ask questions about this one, I have no idea when i'll come back to writing on it T~T
Yeessss. And there's something about dimension/time travel that really allows you to compare and contrast characters (and how they view each other) that's so delicious.
Ok ok ok ok. A Celine who sees this almost-perfect world (perfect because she's not in it?) but starts seeing more of the cracks like Rumi's patterns and the shame she's still holding. I wonder what she'll make of Huntr/x's relationship to each other in this world - ways that they're closer, ways that they aren't.
Also a Celine who's a sole survivor (and the survivor's guilt involved in that) trying so hard to keep Miyeong and Soomin separate in her mind, leading her to be that cold, detached self.
(But... but, well, there's Huntr/x. She's raised those girls solo and it's so easy to fall into habits with them when she sees those little weaknesses and wants to help them fix it.)
(Miyeong and Soomin watching as the hardness softens when Celine forgets herself and begins guiding Mira through an unfamiliar moveset she had brought up. Watching almost enviously when Zoey takes advice Celine gives to heart and prank-ambushes her and Celine dodges but laughs.)
(They don't notice the matching longing looks Celine throws their way. Doesn't see how Celine sees how they've grown up to lean on each other so much more in her absence. Doesn't see how Celine aches when Rumi goes to them first and calls them by the title Celine has always prevented herself from having--)
I do wonder how the ball gets rolling for communication tho 🤔 This feels like a great setup for lots of pining and self reflection and not a lot of talking
