Chapter Text
The memories came back in flashes after the Koma sword had been opened once more, the seal upon it breaking as Rin’s world broke before him with a cooling body laying on the ground. Only an hour ago he might have told another that he had never felt such loss before as he did right then as he watched his father die, but that would have been a lie. The hurt that welled in his chest then was familiar to him in a way that made the boy sick to have to remember, even if the form of it was a bit different.
(After all, one didn’t mourn their father and someone that had never truly gotten the chance to be their lover in the same way. Especially not when such losses were lifetimes apart
(Even if one of them had always ached no matter the world or the name that he went by)
The rain poured down in the small graveyard out beside the monastery as Rin stared down at the stone before him, only a few days after it all. If he closed his eyes he could still see the old man’s face, teeth too sharp and blood pouring down from his eyes and lips as he drove a blade into his heart.
Now Rin was the one left with the inhumane features, each of them showing off exactly what he was once again.
(A demon, in one life and the next)
Too sharp nails (claws, his mind whispered, because that’s what they were at the end of the day) curled into skin that healed much too fast as Rin looked down at the grave of the only adult in either life to have ever loved him knowing what he was and not wanting to change it. To change him.
It never worked, no matter the life he had always been living proof of this.
As Rin bit back tears, sharp teeth that were more like fangs dug into his lips, as eyes that could once again see things better than any human’s should look at the dull world before him.
These changes were more familiar to the boy than he cared to admit, another thing of his previous life that had carried over into the present one, the tail and the point of his ears was new though, but so was having to carry around a sword rather than just have it appear and disappear as he wished.
He would adjust.
(He always did)
Still, in this life at least, the inhuman changes were comforting to have. They reminded him of the patterns that he had lost between this world and the last, the ones that he had just learned to accept only a year before his death. It was foolish to miss something that he had hated for so long, but here he was.
Then again, he had always been a fool about a lot of things, what he was going to do next was only about to be proof of that.
“If you’re here to kill me, I’m sorry to warn you but it’s going to be a bit harder than you think,” the half - demon calls to the exorcist as they drew close.
Rin didn’t know what else they could be when they moved the way that they did, like they had killing in their blood. He would know, he had once moved the same.
(He still did, when he wasn’t paying attention)
The only one that stood out was the demon leading them all, too sharp teeth and ears on full display, Rin knew that’s what he was. He had spent a lifetime trying to find the demons hidden among the humans, and this one wasn’t even trying to hide.
The purple and pink disaster laughs then, seemingly truly surprised by the teen’s words.
(He was, he hadn’t expected the boy to have made them so fast, or at all for that matter. How entertaining)
“It won’t be, huh?” The demon king asks as he looks at the young demon before him. “And why would that be, son of Satan?”
It’s then that the strange boy turns to look at the older demon, his eyes holding far too many years within them for their age as it was, holding far too much of a chill as well. Mephisto couldn’t help but feel as if he were looking at someone that had already seen what the other side of life had to offer and had made their distaste of it known.
He wondered…
Rin has to bite back a growl at the title that he had been given by the other demon, no matter just how true it may be.
“Because my Dad, Father Fujimoto, died to save my life and I’m not throwing that away only a few days later,” Rin said, as if doing so would turn the words into a vow.
Maybe it would, all that he knew was that he’d had others die for him in the past, right before his eyes just as his Dad in this life, only for him to die much too soon after for it to feel as if it had meant much at all. That would not happen in this life, not if he could help it.
And something about those words felt true to all those that were watching the child, the boy that their paladin had moved to the middle of nowhere to raise. The boy that Shiro Fujimoto had never spoken of, but had stayed at his grave the longest. The boy that called the man Dad even as they spoke of the man that had given him life. They could tell that the boy seemed to have loved the excoercist more than nearly anything.
He seemed all the more human for it.
Maybe that was why they weren’t as surprised with the next words that came out of the teen’s mouth.
“And besides,” the reincarnator continued, his lips curling into a smirk, “I have a lord of Gehenna to beat the shit out of.”
And Mephisto laughed with both shock and glee, because this was the outcome that he had been searching for from the start.
"You would hunt your own kind?” The demon asked, knowing that such a thing would take far greater a toll on the boy before him than it ever did on him in the early days of it all when man had first been taught how to slay the monsters of the word.
Though, the dead sort of look in the boy’s eyes made him wonder if such an assumption was wrong.
“Without hesitation,” Rin answered, knowing that the demons of this world were likely different from the ones of his own.
He could do it.
It wasn’t like it would be the first time.
(Maybe that’s what it made it worse)
And Mephisto Pheles smiled wide then, laughing once more. He had never had a little brother be so entertaining before.
“Alright then,” the demon king agreed, thrusting his umbrella up into the air in a manner that made the other exorcists that had been brought roll their eyes as the childish display. They didn’t disagree with the decision though, there was just something about the boy before them that screamed of him being made of the same stuff as the man that he had called Dad. “You’re hired.”
The memories had come back in flashes, scenes of a whole other life, and yet Rin had been too late from the start from going down the same path that he had once before, cursed from birth. It would all be worth it though so long as the ending was not the same.
—-
Being in a limo has a startling sort of familiarity for the demon as he stares out the window, Yukio sitting across from him and Mephisto to his left, though for the first time in his life he actually knows why that is, something that in of itself was almost nearly just as unsettling after so long spent not knowing.
Both of the other two within the car found themselves watching the teen, something a bit unnerving in the silence that he seemed to be holding. Yukio had spent so long with a twin that could never stop speaking that it was strange for him to be quiet now. And Mephisto had seen a glimpse of the coldness in the boy’s and was wondering if he would see it again.
Only one of them was pleased when the boy finally did speak.
“So, an exorcist, huh?” He asked suddenly, drawing both the gazes of the other two in the limo to himself. Yukio would be lying if he said that the dead sort of tone in his twin’s voice didn’t want to make him reach for one of his guns. It sounded so wrong on the other teen, enough so that for a moment he thought that it wasn’t Rin at all (in some ways he was right). “I thought you were going to be a doctor.”
Rin can see the surprise in both of the two gazes, one finding it all far more amusing than the other, the other stopping almost dead with it.
“You know?” Yukio asked with wide eyes hidden behind the shine of his glasses, though his voice gave the shock away. He never would have expected for the other to have pieced it together so quickly, or at all if he were being honest.
Rin doesn’t afford him the same reaction.
“I know when someone I love is lying to me,” the older of the twins replies, a bit of steel in his voice that wasn’t entirely caused by the boy before him, though still was in a lot of ways.
Something about that response causes a shift in the younger twin as well.
“You didn’t always,” the bespectacled teen reminded the other, voice a bit more blank. It wasn’t really the sort of time that one would expect to hear from someone that was supposed to love you.
“Yeah, well, things change,” Rin answers, his voice much the same as the other’s.
The other two in the limo watch as the boy lifts his hands then, drawn to the motion of even as nothing halogens for a moment. It was only that moment though, because in the next one there were flames dancing across the teen’s fingers like they had always been meant to be there.
(They had).
Yukio’s eyes shoot quickly to the sword on his brother’s back, the one that still sat closed and sealed away tight in its bag even as the flames grow just a bit bigger and begin to move down the other’s hand to his arm, shifting as if they wanted to take shape, but just didn’t have the reserves to do so with the sword closed. Even this much should not have been possible at all.
Mephisto looks between the two teens, his eyes landing on the elder of the pair in the end, on those flames that he handled so easily when by all means they should still be consuming him. Things were going differently than how he had planned, but that was alright for now.
Rin was staring at the blue light as well, just as the other two.
The flames were easier to control then he knew that they really should be, after a whole lifetime spent having to work so hard to keep the patterns from spreading, to keep the voice that he’d held then in check and human sounding, to will a weapon into existence with only a thought alone, he supposed that only made sense. It was a lot like drawing after a long break from doing so, a bit worse than he used to be at it, but all the movements were still there.
(He doesn’t admit, not even in his mind, that he felt more like himself when the flames were being brought to life. It was a lot like the year spent with silver patterns dancing across skin that was no longer his. He’d come to terms with everything in his last life, he supposed that it made sense for that to carry over to this one as well)
It wasn’t the only thing to carry over.
Yukio’s eyes go cold at the sight before him, at the words being spoken, and suddenly it’s all a bit too much like all those days when skin was being covered because no one could ever see what had already been deemed disgusting.
“I guess they do,” Yukio agrees, not saying anything after that.
Rin wishes that the reaction was more of a surprise than it was.
—-
It’s after the opening ceremony that Rin sees his new guardian once more, the other demon being the one meant to leave him to the Cram School for the first day of it. They were alone then, no one else around by design so no one would be there to overhear them as they spoke of the classes that the normal students would never have to know of in a perfect world.
Rin figured now was as good a time as any to ask the things that he wanted to.
“Who are you really?” The reincarnated teen asks the world seemingly growing a bit colder as he does so. And maybe it does, because for the first time the shock in which the older demon was looking upon the younger with was not a pleasant sort. “I can tell from the ears alone that you’re not human, same as me, and I can garner a guess that you’re much too old to have only ever gone by Mephistopheles.”
The words were spoken with a detached sort of curiosity, as if the boy didn’t care either way if the answer given was truth or fiction, or if an answer was even given at all.
(That’s part of what made the question so dangerous)
Mephisto thinks about what to say then, thinks about how all of this might alter the plans that he had long created. Thinks about the lies that he could give, the damage that such lies would cost him later when he finally did reveal his true name and the boy figured out that he had not told the truth from the start. Because he had always been planning to reveal the truth at some point, just not right now. But, some things couldn’t be helped.
(Besides, he liked just how preceptive Rin seemed to be)
(In another life, one not plagued by memories of a world that was no longer his, Rin never would have thought to ask, never would have known that there was anything to ask. But in this life he did know, so he did so.)
“My name,” the older demon starts, his mouth twisting in a smile that showed off teeth that could only ever be called fangs and nothing else, “is Samael, the demon king of time.”
If he was worried about the younger demon’s reaction, he quickly found out that he didn’t need to be.
“Well then, brother,” Rin says, knowing that’s what the other was to him, “how do we get to the Cram School?”
Mephisto finds him all the more interesting still.
—-
Rin watches with a detached sort of gaze as the other exorcists in training that could not yet see demons received their temptaints. Yukio - Mr. Okumura - being a teacher already had not been on Rin’s bingo list for the year, but he’d be damned if he let anyone else know this, so instead class passes without a hitch as far as he was concerned. Just a girl being forced to see the horrors of the world that she had likely only ever read and heard about before then.
Honestly, Rin was prepared to pretend that his younger brother wasn’t related to him at all until the very teen himself called for him to stay after class while everyone else left.
And what a call it had been, as the demon and the demon king, barely disguised as an abnormally colored talking dog, turned to look at the human exorcist, finding a gun pointing at the older teen’s head as the last student leaves.
(Yukio didn’t quite know why he did it, just that there was something inhuman in the glint of his brother’s eyes that made his body move on its own, the conversation that he had wanted to have then all but forgotten)
“Are you going to kill me, exorcist?” Rin asks, stepping closer to the gun, until it was pressing into his temple as Yukio’s eyes went wide with shock (he had never expected the other to do this, no one had). Humans were always like this, he knew from his past life, pulling weapons on him the second that they found out that he wasn’t as human as they had thought. Some got over it, and it was summed up to shock, but those that had known for longer were even worse, wanting to fix him. He didn’t think that Yukio fell into that category though. Call it a hunch. “It’s your duty, isn’t it?”
‘Do what you should have done a long time ago’ rings in the boy’s ears like some sort of curse that he couldn’t quite do away with.
(Life would be so much easier if he could)
Yukio only shakes his head with anger.
“I would never dishonor Father Fujimoto's sacrifice like that,” the younger of the two teens protested, hoping that those words would always be true, even as it seemed that this room only had two strangers within it.
The way that Rin only sighed with the weight of a life so much longer than the one that he had lived only proved such a thought.
“Funny way of showing it,” the older of the twins says, eyes pinned to the still raised arm, feeling the warming metal against his skin, though he hardly sounded as if he cared at all.
(He cared too much, and that was the problem at the end of the day)
Yukio doesn’t say anything to that, never gets the chance to do so either as the other boy simply takes a step back and turns away, walking from the classroom without being dismissed, without anything being fixed. Without a problem even being acknowledged at all.
Rin knows this as well. He also knew that about the resentment and hate now, those emotions having shined so clearly in the other’s eyes.
It was fine though, he was used to those that were supposed to love him wishing that he was different than what he was.
(And he was used to being hated for what he could never be)
—-
The dorm building that they had moved into was empty aside from either of the twins, achingly so. Rin supposed that it made sense, after all Yukio had admitted to himself that the human was there to be something of a jailer rather than a roommate. It wouldn’t do for any of the other human students to be near if he were to lose control. Still, that didn’t mean that he was confined to their room, just that he had to sleep in there at night with the other.
This sort of thought was how Rin found himself wandering the lonely building until he found an empty sort of room that he guessed was meant to be more of a communal study room than any of the others, though the tables had long been pushed to the sides of the room to make it easier to clean in its diffuse between spring and fall terms. It was just as worn down as the rest of the building, broken with a lack of care.
It was perfect.
(After all, he was just as lonely, wasn’t he?)
Headphones slid on over his ears, a phone placed down on a dusty table as the music started, an English song that he could never understand the words to until he had gotten his memories back.
It was only fitting that it was a song of loss.
Rin lifts his hands as the music starts, twisting them slowly with the beat, old movements feeling much too foreign in the body that had been his for fifteen years, but it felt so much shorter of a time now. He spun then, feet turning just a bit too much force what he had wanted to do, that was fine though as there was no one else around for the movements to align with.
(He would never admit aloud that dancing in such a way felt lonely without Mira and Zoey at his sides, without their laughter and the sounds of their voices as they sang.
It felt like too much all at once to admit something like that aloud, even to an empty room)
He dances anyways though, allowing himself to mourn a life that has long been gone as he twisted through the room, getting more and more used to moving like that again until it became almost natural once more by then end.
Until his hands ached for the feeling of a blade within them because he had always loved to dance with his sword in his past life.
He had loved a lot of things back then, none of which were here now.
(He never acknowledged the tears slipping down his face as he did, four faces, all long gone, smiling at him in the dark as his eyes closed)
—-
He never knew that Yukio had snuck down to find him and had ended up watching as tears fell down his brother’s face, so achingly human in ways that the younger twin had all but convinced himself that the other could never be.
He never would know either.
—-
The door to Mephisto's office opens without so much as a knock on the first full day of classes, a surprising sort of thing. The boy that steps into the room is less so.
“Why are you bothering me and not one of the other pages?” The older demon asks as Rin takes one of the seats on the other side of the desk, stealing away the pack of American chips that the demon king had not yet gotten a chance to open and popping one into his mouth. The older brother let it slide, it was lunch after all. “Or maybe one of the humans in one of your classes?”
Whatever answer he was expecting was not what he was given, but thus is what the demon’s life had become.
He watches as Rin only shrugs, something tired and defeated and angry in the movement that only serve red to make the younger demon look much older than his years once again as he spoke.
“There’s no point in bothering with them,” the younger brother says, speaking the words as if he believed them with a certainty that no one only fifteen years of age should have. “They’ll just turn on me the second that they find out what I am.”
Everyone does after all, is what he doesn’t say aloud, even if they do come back eventually they still do it. It’s just what humans do.
And Mephisto sighs then because he knew that the boy was likely right, even more so given just who he got his demon side from. It would have been one thing if the boy had been born with demonic traits and things of the like, but without the blue flames, but that had not been the case. The road from here on out would not be a kind one at all.
Still…
“You could at least try,” the demon king says, hating just how guardian - like that he sounds as he does so, how much like an actual older brother, “exorcists have to work together often after all.”
A lonely and hurt demon was a vengeful one after all, if Satan was anything to go by.
He still lets him stay to eat that day, and every day after.
—-
Those words from his older brother stick with the younger demon throughout the next days, which was why he had saved Shiemi that day in the garden with Yukio even when she had called him a demon only a little while before. It was why he had jumped in front of the large frog before it had gotten the chance to kill Suguro not much longer after that, eyes flaring with blue flames that scared the other demon into submission. And, it was why he found himself studying with the others in the classroom even after the class had ended, humming the death verses to himself as if they were a song.
(Yukio always got an annoyed sort of look in his eyes when the older of the twins recited the verses in a sing song sort of tone, but even he couldn’t deny that Rin had the best memorization of them other than Suguro himself)
Bon listened to the other boy, wishing that he found the sound half as annoying as he had only a day ago, before he had owed his life to the other, but he just couldn’t when it was as soothing as it was. The only really annoying part about it that anyone seemed to have with it was the start and stop rhythm of it all that the teen had developed as he stopped to brush hair out of his face every time that it fell too much before his eyes.
“Here,” Bon said, not really looking the other in the eyes as he held the object out to the other boy, “to keep the hair out of your eyes.”
He does look though as the other teen reaches out and takes the hair clip with the hands of someone that wasn’t used to being treated so kindly by those around him, the way that he whispered a broken sort of thanks seemed to only reinforce such an idea.
(And in this life he wasn’t really all that used to it, his strength and anger having always caused every other kid to run, every parent that wasn’t Shiro to call him a monster, a demon. But Bon didn’t know that, and Rin hoped that he would never have to)
Bon watches as the other boy puts the piece into his hair with hands that almost seemed too practiced with the action.
(They were, but at least this time Rin knew why)
“Thank you,” Rin says once more, so heartbreakingly earnest that it’s hard for the other boy to look at him. Harder still for everyone else in the room to look away.
“Yeah, well, don’t mention it,” the taller teen says before walking to his desk, embarrassed from such clear emotion from the other over something as simple as a gift.
Rin isn’t entirely convinced, as he goes back to reading the script before him - though not humming this time, the pattern of that having been temporarily disrupted as he moved onto a new verse - that these humans would be any different from the ones like Celine, or like how Yukio had been ever since the Koma sword had been opened, but he figured that maybe Samael wasn’t entirely without thought.
For now at the least.
(Shima watches as the whole scene plays out, and finds himself almost wishing that Bon hadn’t done that, he had liked listening to the sound.)
—-
Rin was back in that room once more, his body moving with flames dancing over his skin as the sword laid open on the table with his phone. They were warm then, never burning unless he truly wished for them to do so. They were bright too, pulsing around him as he danced and sung a song from a live that was no longer his own, tracing all along his body in faint patterns that were far too familiar to him to ever have to look.
Yukio heard the voice of his older brother from their room, English words and others from a language that he thought might have been Korean filling his ears as he read over the books before him, making lesson plans for the next week. The voice was familiar like this, in a way, the younger brother having heard the other teen singing under his breath just enough to recognize it as Rin’s, but he had never heard it so clear and haunting before.
He had never even known that the other could sing.
—-
There was a large demon before Rin, a cat - like creature that was crying with so much pain filling its large body. It was a heartbreaking sort of sound to hear, even for those that wanted to kill the familiar now that it didn’t have an owner.
It was a sound that Rin had heard before, in a past life.
It seemed once again he and a cat - like creature were mourning the same person.
So, just like he had once done as Rumi, Rin held out his hand because while Shiro may never be coming back, Rin was still there and they could heal together.
And just like in another life, tears slipped down his cheeks as soft fur laid beneath his hand.
(That night, Rin would lay in his bed with Kuro on his chest as a comforting sort of weight, and think of Derpy and Susie both. He hoped, even if it was a wish that came fifteen years too late, that both of the demon creatures were okay now that both he and Jinu were gone.
The Hunter in him, the exorcist now it seemed, thought that it was a selfish sort of wish.
He wished it anyways)
—-
A Mephisto themed theme park had, once again, not been on Rin’s bucket list for the year, and yet he and Shima found themselves walking through such a thing, hunting a ghostly child. Cause ghosts were real in this world for some damned reason.
Rin would never admit it out loud, especially not to his damned older brother, but it was nice walking with the human exorcist through the park, just talking as they looked around for a spirit of all things. Shima was strange in a way, bright as the pink of his hair, but his eyes holding less light to them than one would expect from such a boy. It reminded Rin a bit too much of how he had been when he was Rumi, wanting so desperately to fit it but lying to those that he had loved then from the day that he had first met them.
Something about them walking together like this felt both wrong and right to them both though, so Rin doesn’t pry just yet.
“I’m thinking about getting my ears pierced,” Rin says as they round the corner, the conversation having lagged for a moment. He doesn’t know why he says it, it’s not an important thing or in anyway related to what they had been talking about a moment before, but he says it all the same, “you know, at some point.”
(He doesn’t admit to anyone other than himself that he had kinda missed having them done as he’d had before. He had been allowed so little expression as Rumi, having to cover up so much skin, that they had been a nice sort of addition at the time)
Rin wonders for a moment if the other teen is going to call him a fool or something of the like, but instead Shima just smiles.
“I’ve actually been thinking kinda the same thing,” the pink haired teen admits, nothing mocking in his tone as he does so, laughing. “We should go together one day,” he offers, his smile bright as he does so but tinged with something sad, one hand raised to an unpierced ear as if lost in thought.
Rin would almost call it grief if he didn’t know any better.
“That would be nice,” Rin admits, because there were too many memories for him to want to go alone.
The strange little moment is broken though as Shima and Rin both stop suddenly, though for very different reasons. The pink haired thinks that he sees the ghost boy that they’re looking for and chases off after it, but Rin lags behind though, letting the other boy pull ahead before stopping when he was sure that the other was far enough ahead not to notice.
“You can come out now,” the half demon calls out into the seemingly empty portion of the park. He knew that it was anything but though.
He was proven right when a green haired figure drops down before him, one with ears just as sharp as Mephisto’s (because his older brother seemed to like that name more than his own) and fangs just as long - even as a lollipop was poking out of them - and clothes just as wild as his older brother's (though the color scheme was a bit different, darker in nature).
“I’m Amaimon, the demon king of Earth,” the older demon says, his voice disinterested in a way that makes Rin wonder just who had drilled it into his head that he had to do an introduction first before attacking, because he sure didn’t seem to want to do one, but he was fine with moving swiftly forwards and trying to take the sword from the younger demon’s back.
Rin guessed that he would have to add a lesson on stealing to whatever pleasantries his new older brother had been taught.
The demon king’s eyes go wide with a bit of the interest that his brother had held when talking about their new youngest sibling as the boy easily spun away from his grab as if Amaimon’s speed meant nothing to him. He thought that it might have just been a fluke and tires again, but that time works even less well than the simple aversion from before.
And truly the speed did mean next to nothing to Rin then, after all how could it mean much when he had once been trained to fight beings that could teleport on a whim?
(When he has once been one of those beings himself)
Rin finds himself turning the way that he all but knew that the other was going to go, his hand already moving and feet already bearing down on the ground as he leapt forwards before the flash of green ever even registered in his mind, and grabbed the older demon by the throat with blue flames that made the air around them sizzle as he brought the demon king to the ground, the grass dying beneath them from the heat.
Amaimon's eyes go wide as he feels the burning heat on his human flesh, the way that he back hit earth, and the claws that dug into his throat in ways that would make him bleed if he weren't a demon as he was.
He understood then, the impressed sort of glint that older brother got in his eyes when talking about the demon before him, the one who could command father’s flames even as his demon heart was still locked away within a closed blade. He felt impressed too.
“Is this how you treat all of your older brothers?” The king of earth asks then, curious as to how the other would respond.
Rin only smiles, much too wide and much too sharp.
“Nah,” the younger demon admits, “I usually just fail at making Samael’s tea the way that he likes.”
The demon king laughs then, full fangs on display, and somehow Rin knows then, for the moment at the least, that the other is not a threat.
“Got anymore lollipops?” Rin asks next, eyeing the one that the other had somehow managed not to choke on during the fall.
He does, it turns out, one as blue as the flames that had died down to nothing but warmth being pressed into the younger brother's palm.
Demons and their color schemes, Rin thought as he popped it into his mouth.
The moment was a sweet one, even if still tinted by the violence of Rin not yet trusting to release his hold, it doesn’t last though.
Both demons turn as they notice a new player appear.
The hoodie guy.
Rin spots his classmate immediately, the one that had always kept his face covered to the point that no one even knew the tint of the stranger's skin, let alone anything defining like eye or hair color, or the sound of their voice.
The figure pulls out a sword from their chest and levels it at them both, though not with as much determination as one would expect. More confusion than anything.
“Good bye, little brother,” Amaimon says, as he leaves then, there and gone in only a moment. Much tok fast for any mortal to stop.
Rin lets him go even as the stranger screams after him.
Its then that Rin and his classmate are left alone with one another, though neither say a word as the flames fade from the demon boy's skin. Rin has a feeling that if he were to say anything at all that it would end with a sword in his side.
The silence doesn't last long though.
“I lost the brat,” Shima says as he stops before the pair, his hands splayed on his knees as breaths struggle to come in. Usually he thought that he was in good shape, but after running around most of the park he was starting to rethink that assessment.
He also usually thought that he was pretty observant, but given how long it took him to notice their classmate standing in front of Rin with a blade drawn, he guessed that he needed to rethink that idea too.
He moves though, placing himself between the pair once he did notice the danger.
(It didn’t mean much in the end)
“Rin!”
All three turn as the new voice speaks, seeking out its source. It wasn't hard to find, though Rin couldn't imagine why Yukio of all people would be running at him with something like concern in his eyes.
He never does get the chance to ask.
“You're late, Yukio,” the hooded figure says, speaking for the first time in an feminine sort of voice that made the other three stop for varying reasons, dread falling over the younger twin's face, “I almost had to step in.”
“No…” the teacher said with a voice that was almost a whine, as if all his worst dreams were coming true right before his eyes.
They all watched as the woman pulled off the hoodie that she had been wearing since the first day of class, revealing her identity as she did so.
“My name is Shura Kirigakure, senior exorcist, first class,” the woman said, standing before them in only a bikini top and pants. Maybe if he had been just Rin, the sight would have made his brain freeze with a blush, but the memories of Rumi made him pause at the sight for a different reason altogether.
That cannot be safe in battle, he thought as he saw all the exposed skin.
He found out soon though, that the woman was an inspector, and he was the proof that she needed.
When Shura tries to drag Rin away under her arm, the little twrip threatens to burn her for it under his breath where the pink haired one wouldn't hear. Had it been any other of the pages threatening her with anything else, she might have laughed it off, but she had just seen proof of his control of those cursed flames, and knew that he likely could do as he said, so she lets go and trusts him to follow.
Rin does.
(She couldn't help but wonder just what the old man had been thinking as they walked, but it showed very quickly that Shiro had been thinking of raising the boy as a son and not a weapon.
That it had worked so well that the boy before her was now determined to fight Satan himself for him having taken Shiro away.
Damned man.)
—-
Shura wants his heart, she doesn't trust him with it. She wants to seal it away inside herself where Rin can't have it. To keep it away from him even as it's his, even as his chest aches at the thought of doing so alone.
Even as the thought makes him want to kill her or himself before she can.
When they fight then, its bloody and violent, wreaking the room, as they screamed at one another the same pain.
The flames never burn anything once, but his sword slices at exposed skin as if it fed on blood and was missing it's fill.
He gets to keep the sword in the end.
(He gets to keep his heart)
(Shura almost feels bad for wanting to take it away when the watches as the teen clings to the closed blade, hugging it to his chest with a human sort of fire and suspicion in his gaze. As if he thought that she would change her mind at any moment and try ti take it away from him again, so he was hugging it with all the fire of a feral animal who just had a human walk into their home, shaking as he never quite took his eyes off of her even as she put her own blade away. Especially then, his own knuckles white...
Maybe she felt more than almost bad)
---
Rin had never been camping in either of the lives that he had lived till now. When he had been Rumi there had just been the time, not with being taught to sing and to wield a blade since birth. In this life, though the beginning had been much kinder than the last one, it had just never been something that their Dad had thought to do with them. Though, Rin supposed that idea could be false, after all Yukio seemed well versed in it all.
Still, it’s nice as they’re sitting there and eating dinner, the sounds of everyone washing over him. In a way it reminds him a bit of tours with Mira and Zoey, how there was never a quiet moment unless they were sleeping, and even then that wasn’t quite true.
But this was definitely the most carefree of all of those times, just sitting there eating the food that he had made. Everyone smiling and laughing. He didn’t want it to end.
So of course it did.
—-
Amaimon had his hand around Bon’ throat, choking the human boy with the sort of look in his eyes that screamed that nothing in him cared if the teen lived or died by his hands. Rin knew that look, the cold disinterest, he'd seen it in his own eyes when thinking of demons in another life far too many times to not know with a certainty that his older brother would have no qualms killing all of the humans and never thinking of it again.
Rin watches this, sees it all unfolding before his eyes, and makes a choice that isn’t much more than the illusion of one at all. After all, there was nothing else that he could have done.
With little more thought, and hands that shook not from fear of the demon king before him but of what was to come next, he draws his sword and lets the flames dance his skin as if they were always meant to be there.
(They were)
Shura watches as the boy before her becomes even more demonic in nature than he had been before, looking more like that in nature of the demon king of Earth than Yukio, his twin.
And yet…
She watched as Rin twisted the blade before diving at the older demon with nothing less than a practiced strike, flames shooting out the end of the blade that did little more than ruffle the other student's hair, even as they made the demon king howl in pain.
It was that complete control that caused Amaimon to drop the teen and turn his focus to Rin alone, as the pair took to the sky like beasts even as the flames burned nothing and no one but the elder of the demon brothers. Even as Rin used the blade with far too much skill to it even as it seemed as if his body was moving off of memory alone. Some of the movements foreign and strange, more than enough of them seeming as if they were meant for a different blade. Even with that, she could tell that once he refined himself, he would be amazing.
(As if he had been born for just this)
Yukio watched with horror in his eyes, thinking of all of the times that Rin had done or known things that he had no explanation for. Battle had always been one of them, this was only showing just how good he could be at it. How well trained he naturally seemed to be.
(How he didn't lose control, not even once as he kept the exorcists safe)
Shima watched and felt as if he were seeing a ghost as the boy won.
—-
The son of Satan, all of the exorcists in training realize this as they look upon the boy that they had thought to be their friend, even if he had always kept them at a bit of a distance, but he was a child of Satan all along.
They looked at him with angry eyes that were tinted by fear and betrayal both in equal measure.
Rin looked back at them with much the same.
Humans were always the same, after all.
He didn't protest at all when Shura pulled him away from them, simply walking at her side even as he knew that he was likely walking to his own execution.
It had been a nice experience while it had lasted, he supposed.
(It was only when he wasn't killed on the spot that he thought that maybe it had been the wrong choice. Consequences, consequences)