Right away, Rin started reading up on baby planning and fertility and basically anything he could get his hands on related to procreation in even the tiniest way. Internet articles, books, manuals, podcasts. There was a surprising amount of baby-related media out there. He'd never noticed before.
"Apparently, it doesn't matter that I'm a twin, it only matters if you have the genes for it," he told Daphne over breakfast several days into his binge. "Crazy, right?"
"A relief, more like," Daphne replied. "I don't know what we'd do with two babies."
"The same thing you do with one," he said. "It's all about your cycle and how many eggs you release. More eggs, more likelihood."
She just smiled at him like she'd already known.
They gave themselves time. Time to balance, time to research. Time to really decide if they wanted to go through with trying, if they were honest. A month went by. Rin hardly noticed. Work went back to normal. Rin and Daphne talked nothing but baby. Nobody said anything about the demon, not even Mephisto, who still hadn't returned. The demon didn't even say anything. It just kind of…disappeared. Rin barely had a thought to spare to even think of the situation as an odd one, though it did seem to weigh heavier on Daphne. She'd begun to recover from her breakdown and was taking things easy, feeling things out. The prospect of starting a family seemed to have helped her more than anything, so after another two weeks, they made an official decision.
They were going to try.
Daphne wanted to make sure they had the best and safest chances, so she changed her diet and started seeing a doctor and took a lot, probably too many, fertility pills. They both did. Anything and everything within their power. So a few weeks later, when Daphne came out of the bathroom and handed Rin a positive pregnancy test, they threw their arms around each other and laughed so hard they cried.
"This is crazy," Rin said, holding Daphne's face in his hands and kissing her. "We're gonna be parents."
Daphne could only shake her head and laugh in disbelief. "I know."
They went to work that day beaming, and the change of mood did not go unnoticed. Shura popped into the office she shared with Rin at lunch time and found him and Daphne in there, eating and talking and laughing.
"What's going on here?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Rin offered her his bento. "Want some?"
Frowning, wary, Shura took a shrimp and put it in her mouth. "Thanks," she said, suspicious even as she chewed. "My offer for drinks still stands, you know?" It was clear she was fishing, but neither Rin nor Daphne minded.
"We know," Daphne said. "Why don't you get everybody together and we'll go tonight?"
The response was enough to satiate Shura momentarily. She nodded and let the topic drop, but eyeballed them through the rest of the lunch break. The attention only made Rin and Daphne laugh.
At the end of the regular school day, they received a call to go to Mephisto's office. It was the first time in weeks they had had contact with the demon king. He hadn't even returned to True Cross Academy until that afternoon, and he had been silent long before that—no summons, no ambiguous texts, no phone calls, nothing. When Rin and Daphne walked into the room, Mephisto looked up from his desk with an uncharacteristic solemnity.
"Miss Lux. Mr. Okumura."
He gestured at the chairs in front of his desk. After exchanging curious expressions, Rin and Daphne sat.
"I…apologize for my absence as of late," Mephisto said. "Though lengthy, it was unavoidable."
"It's been months," Daphne replied, but her voice was peppered with concern instead of scolding. "We've… We haven't really known what to do without your direction. The manifestation tag went dead, but we—"
Mephisto held up his hand to interrupt her. "I have been kept up to date on your proceedings. Including the encounter at Miss Moriyama's shop."
Swallowing, Daphne sat back. Mephisto regarded both of them in silence for a second. He looked like he was trying to decide what to tell them, or maybe how to tell them. It was uncanny. Mephisto had always been cryptic, but never careful. He hadn't ever needed to be careful, always twenty steps ahead of everybody else. Rin couldn't remember a time he had ever seen the demon king worried, but—honest to god—he looked pretty damn worried then.
"Shortly after your coltar-based encounter with the demon in question, there were…riots in Gehenna."
Startled, Rin opened his mouth, but Mephisto put up his hand to silence him as he had Daphne.
"News of the spirit's escape was leaked," he continued, "and the authority of the demon kings was called into question. There are many, as you know, who challenge our right and ability to rule." He glanced between Rin and Daphne with an expression of solidarity, a hint at their shared memories of Morpheus and his faction. "Azazel has long kept the spirit under guard, and though her existence was widely unknown, every demon has been made aware now, and they are reasonably fearful."
He paused, but Rin and Daphne stayed quiet.
"It has been determined that it was indeed the augmented summoning spells developed by Director Akiyama and her research team that released the spirit from her bonds. The same spells, unfortunately, have also increased her power. With each demon she possesses, she grows more powerful still."
Daphne shifted. "You're certain of this?"
"She tried to possess Astaroth and nearly succeeded."
Every ounce of blood in Rin's body ran cold. Astaroth was the lowest demon king, sure, but holy shit he was still a demon king. And he'd been thinking things in Assiah looked bad. He could hardly blame Mephisto for his extended absence now.
"How nearly is 'nearly'?" Daphne asked, shivering.
"She sustained complete control of his body and power for a full fifteen seconds," Mephisto replied, grim. "And while Astaroth insists that he wrested control back from her, I have my own suspicions."
"Which are?"
"It was a test."
Mephisto looked to Rin. Apprehension flickered in the demon king's eyes—fear, almost. While they were only half-brothers, and Rin wanted to tell Mephisto to shove his head up his ass most of the time, they did share a bond—at the very least, a connection to Gehenna. What was trouble for Mephisto was trouble for Rin, and vice versa. They did, after all, have the same demon blood.
And that blood demanded unanimity between them. If the spirit was testing, it was certain she would come after a different king next.
"Given the nature of the attack, I've elected to remove the two of you from the case as it stands in Assiah. Any undue exposure to the spirit could be dangerous, to say the least. The less you encounter her, the better."
Swallowing, Rin nodded. She'd already tried to possess him once. Now she'd tried and succeeded with Astaroth. If she continued to gain power, there was no telling what would happen if their paths crossed again.
"I am also bringing Director Akiyama to our offices to conduct further studies on the nature of the demon. As it was her spells that broke the spirit out, she holds the best chance we have at binding it once more. She may require your cooperation in her studies. Is that acceptable to you?"
It was rare for Mephisto to ask permission, and rarer still for him to be so forward about his plans. Most of the time he just left his pawns to stumble around in the dark while he called the shots, but things had changed. Transparency had suddenly become more important than his games. This was serious.
Rin nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll do whatever we can."
Mephisto looked to Daphne. "Miss Lux?"
Daphne was pale, her eyes blank. Her hand flexed unconsciously over her abdomen. After a second, she nodded, too.
"Whatever we can," she agreed.
They left Mephisto's office under a cloud of nebulous concern. They had cram school lessons to teach the exwires, but neither of them got very far down the hallway. Daphne came to a complete halt and Rin stopped beside her.
"What are you thinking, Daph?"
She shook her head, her fingers gripping her shirt so tightly over her belly that her knuckles turned white. "What if we made a mistake?"
Rin swallowed. "There's nothing we can do about it now."
"But, Rin—"
"It's like you said, Daph. If it's not this demon, it's going to be another one, and if we try to wait until the coast is clear, we'll be waiting for forever." The words just kind of spilled out of him, and kept coming. "We can't wait forever. We can't let this control us. Now is just as bad a time as any. The demons aren't going to go away."
"Rin…" She lifted her eyes and she looked at him, so solemn it made him shut up. "What if the demon is you?"
Those words hurt. More than a kick to the ribs, more than a sword through the heart, more than a snapped neck—but that didn't make their implication invalid. The truth of it was what hurt more than anything. When they'd decided to have a baby, circumstances had been bad, but they had been different. When they'd decided to have a baby, Astaroth hadn't been successfully possessed by the same spirit that had been pursuing them relentlessly since that weekend on Miyajima. The spirit that had tried to possess him. What if the demon was him? What if that spirit took control? No—he couldn't even think about it. Thinking about it made him want to throw up, made his hands shake, made him want to punch a hole through a wall and then tear the whole thing down.
"Then we deal with it," he said through his teeth.
Daphne wrapped her arms around him and her arms were trembling. Her whole body was, and his was, too. They held onto each other, anxiously imagining everything that could go wrong.
"I can't do this without you," Daphne whispered.
He held her tighter. "I'm scared, too, Daph."
She leaned away to look into his eyes. She understood. She understood how much being a demon terrified him sometimes, how much he worried about hurting the people that he loved. She'd experienced it firsthand three years ago when she'd been the one on the receiving end—his flames burning that temptaint aura Morpheus had given her. She'd nearly died.
"What do we do?" she asked.
Rin shook his head. "Whatever it takes."
Her jaw hardened and she bit the inside of her bottom lip. A little of that old army soldier that still lived in her somewhere flickered across her eyes. They were strong. And they were stronger together. He could only imagine that by adding a baby into the mix, they'd go beast mode trying to protect it. Whether that was a good or a bad thing remained to be seen. Daphne nodded once, curtly, and he nodded back.
Whatever it takes.
Author's Note: Hi, hi! Just by way of update, I'll be going on holiday from Wednesday next week, so it's pretty likely that my usual "weekly" updates (I use the term loosely, haha!) will go out the window. I'll be traveling for about three weeks, but if I'm able to write, I will. Hang tight, everybody! And thank you, as always, for reading!