Certain things were not easily handled, and sometimes pain carried its own tune.
Rin felt the ache in his heart of not being quick enough, not being strong enough, to save him.
He stared down at his hands and saw them for what they really were; it was easy to find the traits that weren't human and easy enough to hate his lineage.
The exorcist only looked away when he felt a soft nudge against his leg and saw a white dog, fluffy to the touch with a pink and white bow tied around its neck.
The small white creature looked up at him as if it knew his pain and could feel it.
Rin reached down to scoop it up as he stared at the little creature that rubbed against his hands and curled up in a ball on his lap, almost cat like.
He'd never really had a dog and feeling the soft fur against his skin pushed away the familiarity of this particular dog.
The exorcist softly petted the fur and wondered if this dog had any idea, any real idea, of how badly his heart was broken and what he'd seen; it felt like all of his life, his world, was sucked out of him in a single instant as doubt clouded up his mind and tears pushed through.
He hadn't recovered yet and seeing the dog's almost just as sad face peer up at his tore through his heart as the dog whined and brushed up against his hand as if it knew of no other way to calm down a broken heart.
Rin found the last bit of what felt like his sanity vanish as he began to confide in the dog, wishing that the ache in his heart was that easy to vanish, as he told him everything.
The dog listened quietly and didn't even complain when Rin stopped petting him as the exorcist told the whole story of the tragic incident on his brother's latest mission; there was no joy to be found in this ache of loss.
The little, white dog only yipped when Rin had been quite for a while before it chose to nudge its head along his stomach and tried to draw his tired and broken mind's attention if only for a moment.
This was as much comfort as could be mustered in such a moment and yet it felt like more than a relief to have a listening ear and to feel the warm plushyness of fur against his skin though he didn't question where the dog had come from at a school where no one owned any type of pets.
His eyes closed, and Rin fell asleep, dog on his lap and all; he didn't see the dog transform back into Mephisto; he didn't catch the sad look in his eyes either.
Mephisto wished that he could take away Rin's pain and that he could have saved his brother, but he hadn't been there to keep that last blow away.
The least he could do was comfort Rin in the only way that he knew of that didn't mean humiliating the young exorcist.
He walked away with a heart broken for them and wishing that he could have kept this pain away from the young exorcist that would one day follow his father's footsteps by becoming Paladin.
Mephisto could only do so much for now however and knew that he'd watch over the boy for Shiro's sake and for Yukio's sake; he'd become the last bit of family Rin knew, even if it was merely in dog form.