Author's Note: You guys are so sweet! I honestly wasn't really expecting much of a response, so this was amazing! And, since all of you requested a fix-it chapter, here we go. I hope that I get everyone's wishes satisfied with this chapter. It's going to be from Shura's point of view, just so you know. Alrighty, read, review, and enjoy!
Responses to Guest Reviews:
Guest – Thanks for the amazing review!
Guest – I'll make sure that I have Yukio's reaction in here! Thanks for taking the time to review!
Blue Banana – Haha, same. Rin angst especially is my lifeblood. I definitely love the suggestion! I probably won't do the whole kit and caboodle, but I'll definitely put some in there. Like, I totally agree with you that it's unrealistic that he would just forgive them. That kind of hurt takes a long time to heal, if it ever does. Thank you for the absolutely beautiful review!
WARNINGS IN THE END AUTHOR'S NOTE!
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Shura almost turned herself over, laughing uproariously at something Yukio had just said. His ears burned red at the tips, glasses glinting and eyes squinting. He was adorably childish when he got angry. Sometimes, if she got him mad enough, he'd stomp his leg and cross his arms. It was hilarious.
Any hilarity she was feeling plummeted when a small black form tore into the cram school teacher's lounge. Some of the other teachers swore and pulled their legs out of the way, desperately sweeping their belongings out of the way of whatever it was that just tore into the room. Yukio had his gun out before anyone could even blink, Shura's sword pulled out not even a second later.
Shura let out a sigh of relief when she realized that it was just Kuro. She reached down to scratch between his ears, asking softly, "Hey Kuro, what're ya doing here? Ya don't leave yer dorm often."
Before she could pet between those soft, adorable little ears, though, Kuro reached up and sunk a claw into her finger. Shura cursed, shaking her finger loose and sucking on the wound, eyes narrowed at the frantic familiar in front of her. Yukio adjusted his glasses, frown steadily growing, "I've never seen him do that before. He seems rather upset. What's wrong, Kuro?"
His only response was desperate mewling, Kuro crying out and ramming his small horns into their shins. When neither Shura nor Yukio moved, Kuro let out a yowl before digging one who paw full of claws into Yukio's shin and then unlatching himself and tearing out of the room, yowls being the only indication of where he went. Shura couldn't even find it in herself to laugh at Yukio's misfortune as the two shared a look before tearing out of the teacher's lounge after the small demon.
They easily caught up to the still yowling cat and they followed it out of the cram school and off towards the side of school campus. It wasn't long before the two exorcists realized where they were going – the old, abandoned boy's dormitory. Shura swallowed roughly. The only one who was in that dorm was Rin. Was Rin okay?
Glancing over at Rin's brother, Shura realized that he'd come to the same conclusion as her about this having something to do with Rin, but the stony expression on his face made her think that maybe he was blaming Rin for whatever was happening, not wondering if he was hurt by it like she was. It was a sad day when a random trainer was more concerned for someone's life than their own twin brother. Then again, the two had always had a rather complicated relationship. It wasn't that surprising that there was some bad blood and mistrust mixed in there. She would have been more worried if there wasn't. Honestly, though, at this point it was getting a little old. Yukio needed to grow up and realize that he was the only thing that was keeping the two apart. She didn't know why he felt the need to distance himself so much, but it was only hurting the two of them. Boys were so stupid.
Panting slightly, Shura slid to a stop to avoid smashing into Yukio, who had stopped and was shaking, staring at something in front of him. Glancing upwards slightly, Shura realized that they'd made it to the abandoned dorm. Wondering what it was that had Yukio so unsettled, Shura pushed him to the side slightly, craning around him for a better look.
She immediately wished she hadn't.
She distantly heard Yukio getting sick in the bushes near the edges of the building, but she couldn't even muster that much of a response. She mildly realized that she was going into shock. The only thing that broke her out of the stupor she was quickly spiraling into was the feeling of sharp little horns slamming into the side of her leg, followed by a quick swipe of claws. Shura shook her head, ponytail swinging, and ran shaking hands over her face before kneeling down in the grass, unheeding of the blood staining her knees and seeping into the tips of her shoes.
She pushed nervous, shaking fingers against the underside of Rin's neck, against the underside of his jaw. There wasn't anything there. There wasn't anything there! Pushing her fingers harder up against the spot, she finally felt a tiny flutter. The relief almost knocked her back, body shuddering with the release of adrenalin.
Quickly, efficiently, Shura started pressing her hands to any of the large gashes that she could see, trying to keep in the blood. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a form standing immobile next to the building. Voice harsh and dark with worry, she snapped, "Yukio! Call for some help! Now!"
She didn't listen as he snapped open his phone and started calling for medical aid, giving a detached description of the wounds that littered his brother's skin. As blood seeped through the smallest gaps between her fingers and around her hands, Shura took her own stock of the injuries she could see. She might not be a fancy Doctor Meister like Yukio was, but that didn't mean that she hadn't seen her fair share of injuries and didn't know what she was dealing with. What she saw was worrying. No, it was terrifying.
It was easy to see that Rin had landed on his feet, the leg bones shattering and splintering until they looked like a twisted, gory mess. She was pretty sure there was a small fragment of bone sticking out of where his knee should be. The blooming bruise and dark scratch over his shoulder showed that he hit the side of the building on his way down. There were scratches and bruises painting an ugly picture across all the visible pieces of his skin, except his face. Remarkably, his face was mainly untouched. There was a leak of blood and the hints of a bad bruise peaking out from his hair just above his left brow.
Swallowing roughly, Shura pushed her hands harder down on the cut on his shoulder, trying to keep as much blood as she could inside this precious boy. This poor, precious boy.
When someone's hand fell on her shoulder, Shura almost whipped out her sword and stabbed them. Luckily, she caught herself and just whipped around instead, eyes unfocused and breathing harsh. Vaguely, she recognized the stranger's outfit as that of the emergency responders that the Order usually utilized.
Gentle, calm hands pulled and pushed her away from Rin. A blanket was placed carefully and caringly over Shura's shoulders. Unconsciously, she gripped the blanket, wrapping it tighter around her shoulders. As she pulled the blanket around herself, though, she saw the blood on her hands. Suddenly mad (mad? Sad? Devastated? What was this emotion tearing through her and leaving her empty and cold?), Shura threw off the blanket and started scrubbing at her hands, resorting to using her nails to get that cursed blood off.
There was suddenly a voice calling out – maybe her name, maybe something else, it all sounded like white noise – before there was a pair of hands gripping hers, stopping them in their mad desperation to get clean. For a moment, she fought them, bucking and clawing at the hands holding hers captive. After a few moments of her futile attempt, she stopped, gasping for breath. The fog was slowly clearing from her mind. Licking her lips and still panting, Shura blinked up at the person in front of her.
It was Angel. His expression was pained and his usually pristine outfit was stained with blood. He was speaking to her, "-clean. You don't need to tear your own arms apart. I'll wash them for you. Alright? You need to calm down. You're not helping anyone the way you are."
He stared at her seriously, still gripping her hands, searching for a sign in her face of whether she'd continue to resist or not. Apparently whatever he saw satisfied him because his grip on her wrists loosened and gentled before he reached for something out of her field of vision. Soon Angel was wiping a cool washcloth across her hands and arms, working the blood out from beneath her nails and scrubbing it off the creases of her hands and her long fingers.
Finally getting her voice to work, Shura croaked, "Rin?"
Angel's face didn't give away a thing as he answered, "The demon…" He paused and looked in Shura's face before looking back at her hands, "Rin is severely injured. However, from current reports, the Doctors believe that he will survive. They said that his advanced healing was probably what prevented that from killing him. It would have killed a human almost instantly." He paused again, finishing with her hands and moving onto gently wiping the blood off of her knees, taking her shoes off and wiping clean her toes. Finally, he continued, "They said there was no sign of a struggle on the roof. And with the way he landed… with the way he's been slightly – off recently… the Doctors say he jumped."
Shura raised startled eyes to Angel's, but he was still looking down at her knees, methodically cleaning them. He was very clearly not meeting her eyes. Words rose to the tip of her tongue, ready to contradict him, ready to tell him he was wrong and being stupid and that he was just some baldie, so what would he know? But the words wouldn't come because… because she could see it. She could picture with horrible, heartbreaking clarity the image of him jumping off that lonely roof. Her mind went back to several days ago when he blew up at her in the training room, yelling at her for not understanding.
She shouldn't have run. She shouldn't have left him there. Even before that, she'd seen him unraveling. The bags under his eyes grew deeper and more pronounced every time she saw him. His shoulders were a little more slumped and his walk a little less swagger and a little more trudge. His eyes were a little less bright every time he used his powers.
She especially should have known after that mission against the demon nest. He'd looked so broken. He'd looked so lost. He'd been made to do things that no one should do, especially not a kid trying to balance a plate already full of angst and heartbreak and betrayal. Shura raised a now clean hand to her face, grounding the heel of her palm into her eye, swallowing past the tightness in her throat.
Angel didn't say anything until Shura unwillingly let out a small sob. His voice was soft and reassuring and not at all like the Angel she knew when he said, "It's not your fault, Shura. You couldn't have known."
Shura recognized that he was trying to, for once, be nice, but she couldn't accept it. She wanted to go back to normal. She wanted him to be rude and abrasive and easy to fight. So Shura reacted with anger and indignation, "It sure wasn't his fault! The kid's been dealing with a whole lot lately and no one's been helping him! The Order certainly wasn't helping him by sending him off on missions left and right when he needed to focus on his studies! Ya and yer stupid rules and yer stupid inability to see the half human side of him did this! How hard it is to see the half human side of him?!" Suddenly, her anger broke and her shoulders slumped, tears forcing their way down her cheeks. She sobbed, "Why couldn't I see the half human side of him?"
Through her tears, she saw Angel's eyes slide close, grief clouding his sculpted features for a brief moment. His jaw clenched and his fingers spasmed. After a moment, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, staring straight into hers, "We have all made mistakes in the way we handled this situation. You can rest assured that it is being rectified currently. We will not allow this to happen again. If that means that we have to change, then so be it." His eyes unfocused slightly, staring just off to the side of her head, "When I saw him lying there… with you covered in blood next to him… I just thought… he looked like any other True Cross student. Any one of those innocent students could have done that same thing and everyone would be devastated because that was someone who was so miserable that they thought… that they thought that this was the only solution. I guess it just… I just realized that if he did this, then he felt just like we all did. And I thought about how I would have felt if I were in his situation and…" He trailed off.
He didn't need to continue, though. Shura understood completely. They had all failed Rin by failing to understand, to put themselves in his shoes. He'd needed someone to understand what he was going through. He'd needed someone to see the humanity in him.
It was rather ironic, honestly. He was half-human and half-demon and all the humans hated him for his demon part. But then the humans smeared him with insults and dismissals to the point that he lost himself to his demonic side. The humans were the ones that wiped out his humanity. It was all so cruel in it's horrible irony. It was all so heartbreaking in its preventability.
Clearing her throat a little bit, Shura asked, "Where's Yukio? He needs someone right now."
"He's in the hospital, waiting in the room that will be his brother's once Rin is out of surgery." Angel answered promptly.
Shura struggled to her feet, eyes widening when her eyes landed on the mess of gore and blood on the ground in front of her. She battled against the urge to be sick. Angel turned to look where she was looking before wincing and saying, "Go. I'll make sure this gets cleaned up." Shura nodded gratefully and stumbled to a door.
As she sorted through her keys to find the one that would lead to the exorcist hospital, she caught a glimpse of Angel out of the corner of her eye. He was standing still, eyes locked on the roof of the dormitory, blood still staining his clothes, bloody rag clenching in his fist. Shura knew that he still didn't understand what Rin was feeling (would any of them every really understand?), but he was trying and that was mattered. She only hoped that he alone could convince the Grigori and the other exorcists of the necessity of changing something about Rin's situation. There was a good chance, though, that nothing would change. The exorcists were too set in their ways, too scarred from the memory of the blue night. Change was a slow, excruciating process and a single sad, broken boy would probably only be enough to start the change, not exact it. It was sad and frustrating, but an unavoidable truth.
Shura finally got the right key, smashing it through the hole and turning it viciously. She stalked through the door, going straight to the nurse's desk and slamming a hand down on the counter, "Where's Okumura's room?"
The nurse directly in front of her squeaked and try to stammer out an answer, but an older nurse – more used to irritable and angry exorcists – just sighed and said, "Room 103. Please refrain from causing a scene Miss Kirigakure."
Shura didn't grace her with an answer, choosing instead to turn on her heel and head towards the hallway where she knew that room to be.
She slowed when she actually got near the room, walking on silent feet toward the doorway and stopping just outside it, one hand on the frame. Her gaze was sad as she watched the hunched form of the younger twin. Yukio sat unmoving in the room, glasses on the chair next to him and eyes locked on his intertwined hands.
Shura cleared her throat and knocked on the doorframe all at once. Yukio jumped and wiped at his eyes quickly before pushing his glasses on, clearing his throat as he turned around, "Ah, Shura. What are you doing here?"
She shrugged one shoulder, eyes soft, "I wanted to check on ya."
"Yes, well, as you can see, I'm alright. There's no need for you to stay. You should go home and get a shower." Yukio answered promptly, serious expression and a tilt of his head towards the door to emphasize his point.
Shura moved further into the room, causing Yukio to frown. He frowned further when she grabbed a chair and swung it around, straddling it and facing him, "Yeah, well, like it or not, I'm staying. I'm the closest thing to a legal adult that ya two've got."
"Actually," a voice called from the doorway, "That would be me, Miss Kirigakure."
Both of them startled and turned to face Mephisto who was, for once, looking decidedly not cheerful. He settled himself in the last remaining chair, folding his legs delicately over each other and setting his umbrella to rest next to him, against the chair. After he had situated himself, he said, "They are bringing Rin in momentarily. We are allowed to stay in here with him as long as we promise to call for the nurses if he starts to wake. However, they ask that the two of you leave at the end of visiting hours to go home and get cleaned up and rested."
"I'm staying with niisan." Yukio said, raising his head, glasses flashing defiantly.
The expression Mephisto graced Yukio with was actually terrifying enough that Shura and the younger Okumura cringed backwards in their seats slightly. Most of the time, it was impossible to reconcile the otaku headmaster with the powerful demon king, but moments like this made it very clear to see how powerful and dangerous Samael was. Mephisto said firmly, "The two of you will be going back to your rooms when visiting hours end." Yukio bowed his head, but didn't answer. Mephisto turned to look at Shura and she shivered slightly before nodding her head in agreeance. She'd drag Yukio back to his dorm herself if she needed to.
Silence stretched throughout the room for a long moment before there was a bustle of movement. Nurses and doctors piled into the room, quickly and efficiently setting up machines and shoving the visitors out of the way. Shura watched with bated breath as a rolling bed was brought in with Rin settled in the center. Shura was distantly aware of the nurses attached Rin to various machines and locking his wheels into place, but most of her attention was focused on the sleeping boy in front of her.
Despite being hooked up to so many machines and being pale and gaunt beneath the ugly hospital blanket, Rin looked normal – fine. The blood had been washed away from his face and the bruise had already started fading, leaving the faintest imprint behind. Everything else was covered by the blanket. She could, however, see the thick outlines of the casts that encased his legs, both of which had been so obviously broken when Shura had gotten there.
Yukio made a wounded noise in the back of his throat, launching forward as soon as the doctors left, hands hovering over the edges of Rin's face like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. Mephisto's voice was soft as he moved to Yukio's side, "He won't break if you touch him, you know. Besides, he's on enough drugs that he won't feel it anyways."
As if that permission was all he'd needed, Yukio immediately started smoothing the fringes of hair away from Rin's face, making another small, distressed noise at the bags that were so visible in the harsh light of the hospital that sat underneath Rin's eyes.
Next to Yukio, Mephisto was staring at Rin with such intensity, such (dare she think it?) naked concern that Shura felt like she had imposed on something impossibly private. These were three brothers all trapped in the darkest, most twisted webs of fate and Shura was just an outsider with dubious connections to them, ones that didn't even touch the bonds that they shared.
Suddenly, Yukio spoke, "Was I really so blind? That I couldn't see what was happening to him? I was losing niisan, bit by bit, day after day, and I didn't see a thing until I'd already lost him." He whispered the last part, "There was so much blood."
"He blinded us on purpose." Mephisto answered, expression tight, "He purposely projected strength and unwavering confidence so as to not worry us."
Shura piped up, finally moving forward to stand next to the two half-brothers, "He thought that we couldn't possibly understand. He said that I could never understand how he was feeling so I should stop pretending like I did."
"We let this happen." Yukio said, head bowing with the impossible weight of the situation. Shura felt a sudden rush of anger at Rin. How dare he do this Yukio? To Shura and Mephisto? Sure, Yukio hadn't been around much, being busy with missions and not quite knowing how to deal with the person Rin was becoming in his depression and sure, Shura was a harsh task master through Rin's training and sure, Mephisto ruled over Rin's life from afar, largely choosing to let him make his own mistakes. But that was no reason to put this burden on them!
They had been trying! This situation was hard on them too!
Shura felt her anger wash away again as she remembered the empty expression on Rin's face after he destroyed that demon nest. Maybe the situation was hard on the people who cared about Rin, but it was of their own making as much as it was of Rin's. They'd unwittingly added to the burdens he'd been carrying around for months now. They'd made him feel like he couldn't go to them for help or for someone to talk to. He'd kept everything bottled up inside and growing under his skin where no one could see it.
Everyone made mistakes in this situation, but none of the people in this room did it out of malicious intent. No one here was to blame because everyone here was to blame and pointing fingers would just make a devastating situation worse.
What mattered now was that they learn from this experience. They knew what was happening now. They knew that Rin was having problems. Now they could help him. Together, they would forge a better life for Rin, one where he didn't have to feel like this was the only solution to whatever problems he had.
Yukio sobbed once, loudly, before getting control of himself again, "I failed him."
"We all did." Mephisto said. That was the last thing they said for the rest of the night.
When Shura woke up, she started a little bit at the unfamiliar surroundings before remembering that she'd stayed at the Okumura's dorm so she'd be there for Yukio in the morning. Blinking in the sunlight that filtered through the slotted cracks of the blinds, Shura got out of the bed, stretching and rubbing her eyes tiredly. She was wiped from yesterday and not entirely certain that she'd processed everything yet. There was a good chance that the situation would hit her later in the day, but she just hoped that she was alone when that happened. She didn't need anyone else seeing her break down. Everyone who would be affected by this were just kids and they needed an adult who was strong and composed to keep the group together. They didn't need her falling apart on them.
Shura puttered around her room, getting dressed slowly and languidly, taking her time before she had to go face Yukio.
At least, that had been her plan before she heard shouting come from downstairs. Cursing, Shura raced out of the room, taking the stairs three at a time and leaping over the last railing, landing lightly on her feet and rushing around a corner to find herself in the kitchen.
The entire exwire group was gathered there and Yukio was shouting angrily at them, "- cared until now! You don't deserve to know how he is when you didn't care how he was on any other day! He's just a filthy demon, right? Isn't that what you said, Suguro? Isn't it?"
"Enough!" Shura shouted, startling the group, except for Yukio who just continued to breath harshly, fists clenched and eyes shining suspiciously.
"Miss Kirigakure-san?" Shima asked, hanging on the fringes of the group like he really didn't want to be there. His expression was vaguely guilty as if he knew that he shouldn't be doing this, but he wasn't quite sure why.
Shura glowered at the gathered group before turning to Shiemi, "You, what's going on?"
"Ah," Shiemi stuttered, "U-um, we heard that something, something happened here yesterday and we, uh, wanted to see if Yuki-chan and Rin-chan were alright."
Kamiki finished for her as the shier Tamer trailed off, "We found Okumura-sensei, but then he went off on a rant when we asked where Rin was." Her voice was toneless and unaffected, but there was a sort of bend to her short eyebrows and the slightest tremor in her bottom lip that belayed her worry.
Once again, Shura felt her emotions take a sharp dip. Anger streaked through her again, anger at this group of kids in front of her. Yukio wasn't so far off. Why did they care now? They'd been treating him like trash for months, ignoring him and taunting him and insulting him and excluding him and now they suddenly care?
Before Shura could stop herself, she was glaring at them (mainly Suguro, but she made sure to spread her glare across all of them), "Yukio's right. What makes today so different from every other day? What do ya care what happens to a demon, right? Or are ya scared he ran off for Gehenna? That's it, isn't it? Ya think that he joined the other side so yer worried because otherwise ya wouldn't care one bit. Unbelievable."
"That's not it!" Suguro shouted, cheeks tinted red – with anger or embarrassment, Shura couldn't tell.
"Then what is it?" Yukio asked, voice cold and dangerous.
Suguro shrugged, mulishly staring off to the side, fists clenched, "There were just… there was an ambulance and a lot of exorcists over here last night. We saw the Paladin cleaning blood up. We just thought that maybe… maybe something happened."
"And how does that change my question?" Shura asked, voice still charged with anger, "Why care now? Because he's hurt? Are ya seriously so superficial that you'd only care about what happened to him when he's hurt?"
Suguro lowered his head, staying silent, but, surprisingly, Shiemi spoke up, voice loud and slightly shaky with nerves, "Of course not! He's our friend! We just… I just… I was scared at first. I didn't know how to, to react to him when he was everything I grew up learning how to hate and… and… then I realized that he wasn't bad. He saved us! But, every time I look at him, I'm still scared. I, I stayed away be-because I didn't think I could be a good friend." Shiemi lowered her head, cheeks coloring with shame.
"How can you say that?" Konekomaru asked desperately, glancing around the room, hands spread out like he didn't know what to do with them. He looked straight at Shiemi, "He's a demon, Moriyama. He's the son of Satan! You grew up in the exorcist world, so you have to know about the Blue Night! You have to know what Satan has done! So how could you possibly call his son your friend?" Shura raised her eyebrows, grudgingly impressed that all of the normally quiet people were suddenly so vocal.
Speaking of normally quiet people turning vocal, Yukio gripped Shiemi's shoulder and whipped her around to face him. He grabbed Konekomaru with his other hand, expression nothing short of dangerous, "I am a son of Satan!"
The room held its breath, silence waging war with tension around the frozen tableau. Then Suguro burst into the argument, all passionate hands and blazing, intelligent eyes, "That's bull and you know it! You can't compare that!"
"Why not?" Yukio shouted, pushing through the two people he'd manhandled in front of him, stopping inches away from Suguro, somehow towering over him while being several inches shorter. Yukio continued in a scary calm voice that dripped ice, "My and Rin's mother was Yuri Egin, an exorcist. She was possessed and impregnated by Satan. Giving birth to us, having that possession in her, killed her. Satan killed our mother. The man who raised Rin and I – Father Fujimoto, the former Paladin – was killed by Satan days before we came to True Cross Academy. Rin, despite not even knowing demons existed until he awoke as one, swore to become an exorcist for the sole purpose of defeating Satan. How can you call Rin the son of Satan and not me when we were both born of the same person? How?"
Suguro actually stepped back a little in the face of Yukio's fury. Konekomaru whispered from his spot next to Shiemi, "Your… Rin's parents were killed by Satan too?"
Yukio didn't get a chance to answer that, though, because Shima was suddenly squaring his shoulders and stepping neatly between Yukio and Suguro, accusing, "It's not like you were any better, Okumura-sensei. You haven't really been here for him either."
This time it was Yukio who stumbled back, eyes widening beneath their lenses. As gratifying as it was to watch the group tear each other down – to watch them face the same levels of revelations as Rin was forced to face alone – Shura knew that now was the time to step in. This was going too far. She forcibly pushed on the boys' chests, shoving them away from each other. She shouted, "That's enough! Everyone be quiet!"
When silence finally fell, she continued in a quieter voice, scolding, "Konekomaru! Ya never stopped to think about what other people were feeling and what they've been through and ya chose instead to contribute to a person's depression. Shiemi! Ya don't get to decide whether yer being a good friend or not. Sometimes even just being there, scared or not, is enough to count as a good friend. Because Rin would have known that even though ya were scared of him, ya trusted him enough to be near him anyways. He needed someone to trust him. Izumo! Ya might not have acted very different from usual, but ya should have! After everything Rin's done for ya, he deserved to have yer help when he needed it so desperately. Shima! The same goes for ya! Yer precious Bon might have been against Rin, but that didn't mean that ya needed to. Grow a spine already! Be yer own man!"
Turning, Shura faced Suguro, anger growing in the face of his defiance, "And ya, Suguro! Yer the worst of all of them! Yer a rotten hypocrite! Do ya realize that ya once told Rin that ya were friends? Ya once told a kid who'd never had a real friend before that ya were all friends so he better hurry up and learn to trust ya guys with a thing or two because that was what friends did. Guess what? He trusted ya with his biggest secret and he saved yer life from a demon king who ya would have been useless against all in one go and the first thing ya do is get mad at him and call him Satan spawn! How do ya think that made him feel? He'd never had a friend before! As a kid, he had a temper and was unnaturally strong. But he's always wanted to have a friend, to have someone to trust and care about and protect. He knew what friends were supposed to be like. He spent as much time studying friends and trying to figure out how to get one that he knew what friends were supposed to be like. And then ya called him yer friend and then promptly turned yer back on him and left him when he needed ya the most. To him, that just said that he wasn't good enough! That didn't say anything to him about yer hypocrisy. No! Ya betraying him told him that he must be so horrible, so wrong, such a monster that he couldn't even keep a friend! Every taunt ya gave him, every shiver of fear he thought he deserved because it was coming from his friends!"
Shura panted, out of words for the time being. Why couldn't they all just see what they had done to him? Then again, they didn't even know what had happened. They had no idea where Rin was at that moment. They had no idea why he was there.
Apparently, Yukio had the same thought process because he spoke into the startled silence that blanketed the room, "I am sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper earlier." Shura snorted, but refrained from commenting. Yukio continued after sending her a sharp glare, "To answer your question about where niisan is, he is in the hospital." He held up a hand to stop the rush of questions from the group of exwires in front of him. After they all quieted, he finished with, "Last night he attempted to commit suicide by jumping off the dormitory roof."
The silence that followed Yukio's words was deafening. Izumo's voice was shaky when she asked, "Attempted… that means he survived, right? He's still alive, right?"
Yukio nodded and Izumo's eyes slipped close, knees momentarily buckling with relief. Shiemi was crying, huge wet tears slipping down her face and eyes already started to grow puffy and red. Shima was staring off into space, eyes going unfocused, but grip strengthening on his staff. Konekomaru was shaking, pulling at his fingertips as his eyes widened, obviously trying to reconcile his image of a terrifying demon spawn with a depressed teenager. The reconciliation obviously wasn't going too well.
Suguro, though. He was stock still, staring at Shura with huge, shadowed eyes that reminded Shura so intensely of the way Rin had looked at her on that battlefield – on that slaughtering ground – that she had to swallow down a trickle of bile. Suguro's voice was broken, shattered, when he repeated, "He attempted to commit suicide."
Yukio jerked into motion at those words, grabbing his coat and storming out of the room. He called out, "I'm going to see niisan. Class is cancelled today." And then he was gone, swept out of the room on a storm of rage and exhaustion and overwhelming grief that left the rest of them slightly bereft and shadowed in the wake of such raw emotion.
Suguro spoke again, voice stuck on a loop, "He attempted to commit suicide."
"Yeah, we got that! I saw that." Shura couldn't help the way her voice broke on that last sentence, eyes reflexively filling with tears at the thought of Rin's shattered body in the grass, blood staining her hands and her knees and the shoes that she needed to throw out because she couldn't even looking at them without wanting to puke.
"I don't… I don't understand." Suguro said, seemingly not processing anything.
Sighing, Shura turned to the rest of the group, "I'm gonna talk to Suguro. The rest of ya go find somewhere to finish yer homework or something. Be productive while ya wait for news on Rin, okay?"
It was Shima who eventually got them moving, saying, "Okay. Thank you Kirigakure-sensei. And, take care of Bon please?" She nodded and he nodded back, relieved, before ushering the others out of the dorm, shooing them and pushing them and pulling them when it was necessary, taking rather remarkable charge of the situation for how often he portrayed himself as a goofball fool.
Shura was left alone with Suguro, who was still standing there, eyes wide and unseeing.
She led him over to the dorm's cafeteria, motioning to Ukobach that he should whip something up real quick. It was so achingly familiar to a scene she had enacted not long ago with Rin that it made her heart throb with pain. Then, she had tried so hard to convince him that it wasn't his fault that the group of demons were dead. She tried so hard to convince him that he wasn't a monster for doing that. It had been so hard. Something in him had shifted that day, leaning more towards the demon side. He'd told her that he'd killed his own kind. He'd considered himself nothing but a demon.
She knew that that caustic, dangerous mindset was due to so many different factors and had been allowed to fester for too long. She should have known that there was nothing she could have done by herself that day. She should have known that she needed to call someone in to help. But she hadn't. And now Rin was lying in a hospital bed so disillusioned with life that he'd attempted to destroy his own.
This was different, though. This, she could do something about. Resting a hand on Suguro's back, Shura said quietly, calmly, "This isn't yer fault."
"How can you say that?" Suguro interrupted, voice rough with unshed tears, "How can you say that? I've been calling him a filthy demon and Satan spawn! I've been hurting him on purpose! And I've been believing that that was the best course of action! I honestly believed that I was doing the best thing by distancing him from me and my friends. I thought I was finally doing something right, but I just screwed everything up. I screwed it all up."
Shura gripped Suguro's chin, idly wondering when she became the mother of this ragtag group of misfits, and forced him to look her in the eye, "This is not yer fault. Sure, ya contributed to the situation and ya did absolutely nothing to help, but neither did anyone else. Here's the thing kid, we all screwed up. We all failed Rin. But if we all blamed ourselves, if we all blamed each other, then we're just going to leave Rin alone again. We need to stop focusing on ourselves and focus on him instead. I think he deserves a little bit of positive attention after everything we've put him through."
Suguro stared at her with wide eyes before lowering them slightly to stare at his clenched fists, "It only makes sense, doesn't it? The thing that finally made me realize that he's been half-human this whole time was when he did one of the worst human acts in existence. You were right. I am just superficial enough to only care when he got hurt."
Instead of anger flowing through her at that thought, a calm sort of crushing sadness settled in instead. She chuckled sadly, "Yeah, ya were. But not anymore. We're all going to change now. We're going to change to help Rin get better and we're going to chance to get better."
"I don't know if I can face him." Suguro whispered.
"Ya don't have to." Shura reminded him.
"I think I do." Suguro said before pausing and then continuing, "I'm just afraid that I'll mess it up again. Even now that I've realized everything I've realized, I just… it's so hard to see Rin. Because… because… I'm not blaming him or anything, but… he betrayed us too! He lied to us for so long. And yeah, I get it. Everything that's happened showed that he had every reason to lie to us, but that kind of hurts. It hurts that he expected this out of us. It hurts worse to know that he was right."
Shura shook her head, "Don't be so selfish. He wasn't just hiding for ya all. He knew that if the Grigori or any high-ranking exorcists found out who he was that they'd kill him. He's incredibly lucky that Mephisto has some sort of plan for him and was willing to represent him in court. Otherwise… he'd have been executed a long time ago. I honestly don't think he didn't tell ya because he thought ya would react badly – at least, I don't think that was as big a part of it as ya seem to think. I think that a big part of him keeping his secret was that he wanted to protect the people around him. Yukio and Mephisto and the priests at the church he was raised in and Shiro's memory would all be torn apart and accused and destroyed in the wake of a secret as huge as the one he kept. He was protecting the people he loved by keeping that secret and we all know that he'd go to any lengths to help the people he loves."
For a long, long time, the two of them sat in silence.
Then, suddenly, a phone rang. Both occupants of the room jumped, Shura reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone. She blinked, "It's that clown." She muttered before opening the phone and answering the call, "'Sup?"
"Perhaps now would be a good time to bring the exwires to the hospital. Yukio and Rin have talked and I believe that Rin has come to an important conclusion." Mephisto announced cheerfully before abruptly hanging up.
Shura growled to herself softly, "Sometimes I hate that git." Louder, she said, "Get the others. We're going over to see Rin."
It was almost amusing to see how quickly the group was gathered. If she hadn't known better, Shura would have almost said that the group of exwires had just waited right outside the building for them. (She would find out later that they had used Shiemi's key to get to her house through the front door and so had really just been a door away from the dorm).
Once they had all scrambled into the room, Shura threw a hoodie around her waist and stood up, swinging her keys on her finger, "Come on, kiddos. We're going to see Rin. Try not to be jerks, alright?" The group lowered their eyes, ashamed. Shura chose to not tell them that Rin had come to some sort of important decision. She wondered idly what it could possibly be. She couldn't think of anything.
Going through the door, Shura led the group down the hallway, ignoring the stink eye the head nurse gave her from the front desk. They came to a stop in front of room 103. Shura stood back and motioned the others in. They needed to start taking responsibility for their actions and that meant not running from a bad, awkward situation.
Once they had all filed into the room, Shura followed, watching Rin sadly. The boy was obviously exhausted, pallor still paler than usual and dark bags still hanging under his eyes. His voice was raspy when he said, "Hey guys."
Shura pushed through the group, crouching next to Rin's bed and sweeping his bangs up, running long fingers through his hair, "Ya don't have to act strong for us, Rin. Ya know that, right?" She whispered it into his ear. The smile he gave her that didn't quite reach his tired blue eyes told her that he didn't know. She sighed and just kept running her fingers through his hair.
Shiemi was shifting slightly from foot to foot, looking like she wanted to say something, but obviously not knowing what to say. Konekomaru was still shaking slightly and Shima and Izumo were glancing at each other like they were trying to convince the other to go first. Suguro was staring at Rin intently, like he was trying to take him apart and figure out what made him tick.
Rin chuckled softly, wincing a little, before giving Suguro a slightly shaky smile, "Is there something on my face? You're giving me a weird look."
Suguro frowned before saying, completely bluntly and without any preface, "You're not a demon. You're the same Rin that we met on the first day of cram school."
Rin's slightly drooping eyelids flew open, his head whipping up to stare at Suguro with wide, so incredibly reluctantly hopeful eyes. Suguro shifted uncomfortably at the attention, shoulders hunching and his nose scrunching before he turned his head a little to the side, shifting his weight a little from foot to foot.
Rin gave a small smile – another one that didn't reach those still lightless eyes – and said, "You don't know how much that means to me, Suguro. Thank you." Suguro ducked his head, but didn't answer.
His little comment was enough to spur Shiemi on, though, because she spoke up next, "I'm sorry Rin! I, I messed up and I hurt you and I'm sorry! I won't, um, I won't let this happen again! I'll start sitting with you in cram school again and we can all have lunch together! We won't leave you alone anymore!" At her final sentences, Mephisto, Yukio, and Rin shared a look that was dark was sadness and resignation.
Apparently Shura wasn't the only one who noticed because Izumo immediately demanded, "What was that look? What's wrong?"
Rin ducked his head and clenched his fists on the crisp sheets of the hospital bed, so it was Yukio who eventually answered, voice thick with regret and heartbreak, "Rin won't be joining us in cram school anymore. We've determined that it would be better for him if he took some time away from True Cross Academy. There is a school in the north that is made entirely of Tamers who are training for another meister. We think that a half-demon will find it a little easier to fit in with a group of people who regularly interact and work with demons. Mephisto contacted them and they are more than willing to let Rin attend their school. Besides, that way he'll get exorcist school all day so he'll be more prepared when his deadline comes around. Luckily, Mephisto with, surprisingly, Paladin Angel Auguste's help, was able to push the deadline back two months due to the not-conducive-to-learning environment niisan has found himself in recently. Additionally, the school therapist of this place niisan will be going to has already promised to meet with him several times a week to help him."
Shima's voice was soft and so, so sad when he asked Rin, "So we'll never get to see you again?"
Rin shook his head, "I'll still come back here on breaks and I'll still have my phone. I know Yukio plans to write me letters. We'll still be able to talk and communicate… if you… if you want to, of course."
It broke Shura's heart to see how unsure and careful Rin was being. Normally, he would hide this insecurity under layers of brashness and shining optimism, but apparently being so close to death – wanting to be so close to death – had stripped away those false layers and was showing this true Rin that had been breaking while they all watched on.
As the others kept a respectful distance and made awkward, still slightly fearful and still definitely not connected small talk, Shura made a promise to herself and to Rin. They had all watched on as he fell apart, but no more. Never again would they just watch. From now on, they were going to do something and they were going to keep him alive and loving life. He might be leaving them for somewhere where he can grow better and find happiness, but they would make sure that he left only his bad memories behind, not his friends.
Nothing was fixed and everything was still broken and shattered and so, so very wrong, but people were changing. Hearts were turning over new leaves and finding a better place in the world. People were becoming better. And their friendships would be better for it.
This wasn't a solution, but it was the start of one. And Shura was determined to make sure that it ended up being a good one.
Author's Note: WARNINGS – graphic description of violence, suicidal ideology, intense self-hatred. So… that ended up being a LOT longer than I'd planned it to be. Like, yikes. Hope you liked it anyways! I tried to get elements from what everyone wanted in there some way or another. I didn't exactly make everything better, but I think that I fixed everything up. Thanks for reading and let me know what you thought!