A/N: This is a short little thing that was inspired by the first few manga volumes of Blue Exorcist. I have not finished the series, nor am I up to date. Please keep this in mind when reading.

Demons don't die

Rin always was more demon than he liked to admit. The only part of him that could be described as human was the part that truly sought peace for the world. The way he went about it, talked walked and fought, was and still is demonic.

His goal, defeating Satan, was the only thing tying him to his human side. If he had been left without something good to strive towards, he would be back in streetfights in no time, in gangs, or smuggling in shady deals. Like a magnet those things were attracted to him, and he in his turn responded to that. It was his human side that kept him from becoming the anti-christ his true father wanted to see so badly.
His demonic powers grew, and with that, so did his aspiration to defeat Satan. Both sides of him grew into one, until both demonic and human were inseparable. Rin would be lying if he said he disliked fighting, but his teeth ground in frustration at violence without point.

He hadn't been the first one of their group to die, no matter how likely that had seemed. After years and years of growing stronger, fighting and spendingtime, it had been Shiemi to go first. From one day to the other it seemed, an illness had gotten to her in her old age, and a mere two months later the whole group was watching her casket descend into the earth.

It seemed like the starting shot for a race. Like everyone but Rin was straining to cross the finish line, his friends died around him. Even Yukio. Old age, a fight with a demon gone wrong, illness, even a fall down a flight of stairs.
Rin died too, when he looked in the mirror and didn't see a human face. A body was left behind in his bed, dried out and mummified from exhaustion. Rin wondered morbidly if he had ever been the true keeper of that body, or only the parasite controlling it like a puppet on strings.

Flesh had made place for a bleak and pointed skull, animalistic and gruesome. His black hair still rested on his head, but the tips of two horns grew in between the strands. His eyes were empty and white as they stared back at him from the mirror. Eyes would not close for the loss of eyelids, and a skull without flesh could not stop grinning.
Maybe the worst thing about it all, was how little it mattered to him. The people he wanted to look good for had all gone anyway.

He looked like a demon, and an unpleasant chill followed him into every room he entered. Maybe he'd even become a bad influentce, an evil whisper in the ears of the unaware... He hoped not.
The exorcists went bleak whenever he showed himself in the academy, or close to the premises, and when they started to send the new Paladin to his house every day, Rin realized they feared a loss of control.

A loss of control over him.

It made him think. Who had the juice to stop him anymore? All these years he had been growing, nestled with the best of the best and trained for the better part of his life. Let alone all the unwanted and forbidden demonic knowledge that seeped into him with every moment he breathed.

When the latest Paladin eventually offered him a residence beneath the stone of the academy, he agreed. He barely fit into the old house anymore, and maybe life at the academy could be more interesting.
It was a prison, they didn't try to hide it, but in a way, it was better than staying in that small house, in between all the items that had lost all their usefulness.