"I can't believe Yukio, er... Professor Okamura, would risk his life like that." Shima admitted, still horrified from the incident. "I mean, the scene still replays in my mind almost everyday." It was how Rin held Yukio's head as they were running to them that made his eyes well with tears, like how a little boy holds a pet rabbit, soft, close to his face, feeling the fuzzy fur. Yukio was, and had been precious to Rin.

"It might as well be just 'Yukio' now. He's gone Shima." Bon was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor of their temple, Shima's voice ached to be listened to, breaking his concentration. He plopped his elbow down on one knee, his face in his palm, the other arm touching his tender side, the stitches had just came out. His brown eyes opened, frowning, he knew they still weren't ready mentally to start chants again, ready to be back on track with training, with what their lives consist of, with what their lives are, and are going to be.

Konekomaru barely slit his eyes, and rolled them to the left, watched the two, but mostly Bon. For the three of them had been trying to meditate together, a daily morning practice for Airalists, those who are studying to become Aira Exorcists, he knew what Bon was feeling- stress. They had just went through something ungodly difficult, and they weren't 'okay' yet.

Shima unlaced his crossed legs, spread eagled them, and laid down flat on the stone floor staring at the wooden rafters, arms behind his head. He couldn't concentrate, still after three weeks, he just couldn't wrap his mind around it.

"Honestly, I'm glad I wasn't there, but it's hard to think that someone close to us is gone." Maru finally said quietly. He put his feet out too finally, and laid back on his elbows, staring at his bare feet.

"You wouldn't of wanted to see what we seen Maru, it was..." Shima went into thought, his arm slid over his face, "more heartbreaking than anything." He had never seen Yukio cry, none of the 'Highland Brothers' had, but in that situation Shima knew that Yukio knew, 'he was done', that he was over. "I've never seen... so much blood."

"That's the way it's gunna be." Bon's words were harsher than normal. "We're gunna be exorcists. Sometimes, people ARE going to die. It could be you or I next time, we don't know. I don't want to think what might happen, instead, I think all we can do is train." Bon was obviously the leader of the three, the most outspoken, the loudest, the most independent, and the one that his brothers looked to if in need. He had to say something to try to enforce their walls, "We have to do what we can to become better, so our chances, especially when we work in a group, excel."

"Bon..." Konekomaru trailed, staring off into the sunrise outside the window, "I know you're angry about what happened, especially that you couldn't do anything to help them, as you said, but maybe it's for the better."

Bon piped, "Damn right I'm angry." His grunted out, switching posture and laid on the floor like Shima had done, Maru's back to him now. "Out right frustrated." He sighed heavily and sucked in a big breath of air, letting it out slowly. "For the first time... in a long time... " He recalled back to when the blue flames hopped from one monk to another at his temple, (the temple that had been right before Yukio, Rin, and Shiro's), a strong feeling of helplessness overcame him, remembering, "I felt, like I was just in the way. What was going to happen before me... " He closed his eyes, hating the weak feeling, "was going to happen, whether I liked it or not."

"You can't control every situation. That's just the way it is." Shima breathed, running a hand through his magenta hair, he had just dyed it again the day before and began rubbing on the pink marks the color left on his palms, soon it would fade into that 'bubble gum pink' that he liked.

"With enough patience and practice, discrepancies can be eliminated." He piped.

Shima, "But when you work in a group, sometimes it's not you. It's the others around you. People make mistakes; even Exorcists."

"Then we have to train to make sure if someone messes up, then we came come back from it."

"Hey Maru," Shima's thoughts shifted, and so did his face, from staring at his hands and speaking with Bon, to looking at the boy, who actually was allowing his bald head to grow hair finally after nearly a whole three years, "What did you mean when you said 'it's for the better'." He was confused. How could it be better when someone's life was lost?

"Well..." Maru shyly said, "It's just some thoughts I've been having lately."

"Like what?" Bon asked. More and more, especially after their first year at Cram School, Konekomaru was coming out of his shell, becoming slowly more opinionated. It intrigued him, his shorter, quieter peer always had some sort of interesting point. He was beginning to see it more and more as a strength that he had that Shima and him didn't have as much- the ability to think 'outside the box'. All Maru needed at times was just some validation that the points that he brought up were useful, thoughtful, or interesting, and he was a happy chit for the rest of the day.

"Well, Yukio was a very hard-laced, tough person. A good teacher; and an even better Exorcist. He was good at a lot of things, and achieved two Exorcist titles. Already at fifteen, he was... how should I put this... "

"... a hard ass?" Shima blurted.

"Sure." Konekomaru wrapped his arms around his legs. "Think about it from an outsider's point of view though."

Bon quirked his head, furling his brows, trying to get the point.

"Rin has been living in his brother's shadow, and for his whole life, Yukio's been 'in the lime light'." Maru shrugged, "It's awful that Yukio is dead. I'm sure Rin is terribly upset, but Yukio isn't there anymore to coddle him."

"He didn't necessarily 'coddle' him, it was more so, Yukio just 'wore the pants' all the time. We all knew that he did. He had to." Bon stated, he chuckled, "I mean, with a brother like Rin, snoozing all the time in class, I mean the guy's a nice guy, funny and all, but he's just... not very smart."

Shima added, "I get it, you mean... Rin is sort of forced outside of his comfort zone, so now, he's forced to learn. He has to."

"Not just that, his whole personality is going to change. He might be the same in some ways when we get back to True Cross after our second year of all online classes, but... he has to be independent now."

"True Maru. Yukio isn't there to tell him to study, to wake up, to do this and that, to overshadow him, like a manager does a new employee."

"Right, Rin isn't this 'employee' of Yukio anymore, because I mean, we all knew that's how it was." Shima brushed up on Bon's statement. Shima knew the jest of their relationship was Yukio telling Rin what to do. He had seen Yukio poke at Rin with words, Yukio's face go bright red when Rin didn't do something he liked, he couldn't of even imagined what it would of been like to live in that dorm room with him; someone who tried to make himself out to be 'perfect', or if not that, someone who just consistently, and neurotically had absolutely everything in place, and if you stepped over his lines, crossed them, you would be put back into place. He didn't understand how they could even be brothers, they were so... different.

"I'm interested to see what's going to happen." Maru laced his fingers across his lap and laid down on the floor same as the other two. They all stared at the ceiling together, the three also the same age, all very much like brothers, although each very different. All fifteen.

"Yeah, what's going to happen to Rin? We are all wondering." Bon said under a deep sigh. He was perplexed, but in slight instability over it, in a mental struggle. He was unsure what all of this would do to him. Partially wondering also because of his rivalry with him in becoming a better exorcist than him.

"I'm worried for his mental health, but... I'm also confident that he's going to rise from this... " Maru stated, his words, profound in meaning.

Both Shima and Bon sat up slightly at that, just enough to stare over, upon Maru, his deep Japanese eyes, nearly black, unmoving under his glasses. That statement peaked Bon's interest.

"... and become the best exorcist we've ever seen..." Maru's voice shivered with his lips barely open, "... surpassing even Yukio himself."


"Yo, Yukio, it took me awhile to get back, but I finally have everything you need. A cat can't just carry all that stuff at one time." He squeezed himself through the small window crevice that the doctor had left open. 'He needs fresh air' that doctor had said.

Yukio opened his eyes, and lifted himself off the bed, much stronger than he had been a week ago. He had decided to stay hospitalized for one, big, main reason- he had been in immense pain.

Yukio laid in bed, as the doctors examined at him.

"No more internal bleeding. Looks like these stitches we can get out tomorrow." A doctor concluded. "What do you think about that Yukio Okamura?"

Yukio just barely turned up the edges of his mouth. His new demon blood was healing him... very very fast.

"Alright, seeing as you still lack the ability to stand, I will prescribe you some sedative, and once your stitches are gone, you can file some paperwork and leave."

No response.

"Just make sure you go with your friend downstairs."

Friend. That friend, is no 'friend' of mine. It was 3 a.m. He spoke softly, in a whisper among the night, "Kuro, bring the flashlight over here." The little cat dug it out of a satchel he had just brought in through the small opening, put it in his mouth and dropped it on Yukio's bed. "Turn it on and put the beam towards a solid wall."

He did so.

Yukio realized the English Exorcists below must not of read their briefing that well, as they lacked that he was a Doctor Exorcist. They could take his guns, but not his doctoral knowledge: He could remove stitches on his own, bandage his own wounds, and even though he couldn't see exactly 100% straight yet, and at times his head spun... that wouldn't keep him in a hospital.

Once he had heard the stitches were ready to be removed, that's when he knew... it was time to leave. The medication he was still taking, he could survive without it, but just in case, he had made sure that he received a dose right before midnight, enough time for it to kick in so it would be easier to get out.

He stood up, stretched, and smirked, a little lie- one of the things that he had kept from the doctors, pretending he couldn't put hardly any weight on his legs, that he couldn't walk. If the Vatican was going to lie to his brother, then what point did he have in telling the truth to them anymore at all?

Fools.

Yukio grabbed the scissors he had Kuro steal and began his process, he popped the first stitch, and the thread came through his skin, as smooth as butter, when his checks for proper scarring were complete he worked quickly.

"Yukio, where are we going t'go?" Kuro whispered, questioning.

"We can't go back to Japan." Yukio concluded. "That's the first place they'll look."

"Is running from the Vatican even... smart? Or possible?"

He laced a cotton ball with alcohol, tensing, as he dabbed his skin with it, then began peeling off the excess, dead tissue that didn't need to be there. "Probably not."

Kuro sat on his haunches, his tail twitching.

"I don't know my plan of action this time Kuro." Yukio let a deep breath go, now wrapping gauze around his thin torso as he stood, arms going around his body with the white roll, like around an equator, it was quick, exact, fluid. "The Vatican telling Rin I was dead..." He snipped it off and secured it, "I can tell you... isn't something I planned. I want to find out why they kept me alive, but not at the risk of Rin seeing me."

"But don't you yearn to go back home?"

"Yes. I do. But, something is going on in Rome, at the Vatican, and I'm going to find out what it is." Yukio started putting on the gray jogging sweats Kuro found for him, and a plain white t-shirt. He zipped up a dark green hoodie, he spoke from the darkness under his hood, only his glasses, dark reflections, like pools of shiny, black, placid water. The flashlight flicked off.

"But then, why don't you want Rin to know you're alive?"

"Because... since I don't know the reasoning behind why they told him I was dead, it's not safe for Rin to know. What if they find correspondence between us? What will they do to him? And, that would make it easier for them to find me, or you."

The little cat gulped, scratching behind his ear and blinking nervously.

"Exactly, you don't trust the Vatican either do you?"

Kuro shook his head no. Kuro wasn't just not-loyal to the Vatican, he out-right disliked the counsel completely. Since he had been earth-bound, so many times, Shiro had told him stories of things that had happened there, reasonings within the organization. They played favoritism, they vowed things, then broke them, they pledged protection at times, but then couldn't even keep it themselves. Hypocritical.

Yukio grabbed the satchel and emptied the entire bedside drawer into it, yanking it out quick, like a thief would a drawer-full of jewels, dumping all his few personal possessions the Vatican left him with, and whatever else was in there, and nonchalantly tossing the wooden drawer onto the un-made bed. He flicked his glasses up.

"You sure about this?" He looked out, placing his hands on the seven inch ledge Kuro had came in on, then to the ground, from the six story hospital window.

"It's less noticeable than me becoming larger. Lemme tell you, nothing is more frightening to the public than an overgrown, roaring animal in the streets."

"Hop on Kuro." He felt the air on his face, wafting his hair, which reminded him, he needed to hide his ears under it, perhaps he would let it get just a bit more shaggy. Kuro latched onto his back, squeezing his claws tightly into the hoodie. Yukio could feel it, but at the same time his body was going numb, so he didn't care about that as much at the moment. He didn't have a fear of heights, but this was out-right madness! Could he possibly be... seriously considering this?

He was frozen, his body going through shock waves, his brain over-thinking, wild.

"Yukio. You aren't a human anymore." He could feel Kuro lifting up his hoodie and he felt his tail flick out from underneath it. The cow-like tuft whipped his face, and he brushed it back, whacking it away, annoyed, the thing didn't obey his will. "Stop fighting it, you're going to need it for balance."

He nodded. Sort of like a monkey he figured. Kuro latched back on.

"I tell you what Yukio, you do this, get yourself out of here, which is something I know you want to do, I will tell you a BIG secret." Kuro resulted in trying to tempt him, the information he was going to give was important as it was, but he used it as a lure. Had to. Yukio wasn't budging.

Yukio quirked his eyes. This little demon knows so much more than what he puts-on. "Percentage. Give me a percentage." His knuckles were solid white on the window frame, his Nike's locked onto the concrete, he stood then, the full length of his 5' 10" body outside the window, vaulted, standing, edging his way further away from the hospital room he had had. He still had no idea how many exorcists the Vatican had nailed down with 'watch Satan's younger twin son as he heals from being impaled' duty.

"You'll make it..." Rin was a better risk taker than Yukio. Yukio liked calculations, was a planner, didn't like jumping in head-first. Seeing as this was the most time Kuro had ever spent with Yukio alone, he was quick in seeing that they were different, he could see why they butted heads, so different in the very core elements of personality.

Yukio stood there. Wind blowing, his heart exploding out of his chest, breath puffing. "I could die."

Kuro brought up a great point, "You can risk your life for your brother, but not to save your own skin?"

Yukio looked to the left at the cat on his shoulder blade, hanging on. From under the hood he could see the green eyes probing for an answer. He was right. There was so much more to this life now, a mystery, and at the whim of the Vatican granting it to him, he realized, even his own death he wasn't in control of; the Vatican was so in-charge of his life, in-charge of his breath, his beating heart.

This one leap of faith, would set him on a path to control his own future.

"Just jump Yuki."


He was tired of rooting through shelves of momentos, out right exhausted of looking at pictures, looking at their childhood toys, his brother's clothing, his books, his extra box of eye glasses, his bullets, the guns. It was how he was coping, moving everything useful, practical, or something he had personal ties to into his closet, and everything else of Yukio's, into a donation container.

At first he had been so torn up, but now he was just forcibly accepting the fact: He was gone.

He knew he'd always remember exactly how it felt staring at his hands slowly lowering the first item to go into the cardboard box a couple days ago; Yukio's three white dress shirts:

So crisp, so nicely tailored to his brother's wider shoulders and long torso, the shirts looked baggy when he tried them on, that tall physique of Yukio he never got.

The buttons were sewed on so tightly, and it smelled like Yukio's laundry soap, the kind he hated, but now yearned to sniff floating in the air from the wash. He buried his face into the fabric, into a forced hug, sobbing, leaving the shirts wet, using them much like tissues, the cotton padding his cheeks. Minutes later, making sure not to unfold them, he delicately placed them in the bottom, letting tears leak down, and drip over, watching the fabric soak the drops up.

The blood leaked from his nose into a pool of pulsing red below him. Yukio, his body taken, laughing sickly in the background. A blue fire, screaming.

He winced and growled, frustrated, torn by that thought.

The past couple weeks drained him. Sadness mixed with anger. Anger mixed with thoughts. Thoughts mixed with outright rage, an uncontrollable flow of tears, and an absolute... guilt. Had that really been the only way? Yukio? Could you of made me do anything else?

Please. Yukio. No... no... Yuki. You're (cough) stronger than this.

He slammed his fist into the desk, practically bending the top of it into a different shape, cracking the finish. His demon strength was back, and the thoughts, the bittersweet thoughts. Inescapable. His mind fluttered with them, was littered, covered, encased by them.

Trying to calm down, he forcibly stared blankly, he had gone through all of it. It was done. Four boxes worth in three days. He sat in the desk chair of his room, a face void of... everything. Forcibly void. Forcibly empty.

Yukio had been there for their old man's death, a shoulder to lean on, but now, what really did he have? Who did he have? Monk Hatsuni? That one was definitively, and mostly a man of God, who kept his nose buried in the scripture. Monk Nutu? Even though he felt slightly closer to him at heart, Nutu was never around, he was the monastery errand runner.

He stood and scratched his arm emotionlessly, and walked to the little wooden box sitting by the window sill. In it was a chain, a military ball-chain, on it he had found old American army tags.

He and Yukio, the orphans living at the monastery, when they were little, would get boxes donated to them of clothing, food items, and money. Shiro would let them root through the boxes, and keep what they wanted. Rin had found the tags first, and so he kept them.

He would play 'Army' with Yukio. Yukio would be the 'guerrilla war propagandist', Rin would be 'an army dude'. At that time, when they were about six, it didn't matter how much smarter Yukio was than him. All that mattered was that their relationship was pure, loving... fun. They were kids, and they did what kids did: they played.

Yukio would puff his little chest out and waltz around addressing Rin, 'What will you do now... Sargent Smith?'

'I'm gunna bust outta here! You wait and see!' Rin pretended to be tied up to a pillar in the monastery.

'We shall see about that! Ha ha ha!' Yukio 'fake-laughed', and pushed up on his glasses, his one true fear when he was a boy, breaking his glasses.

Yukio's dark-framed, square glasses, reflecting orange sunlight... and specks of red...

Rin angrily fummed with the chain in his hand, roughly threaded the tags off, and threw them across the room. They slammed, making a loud racket as they hit the floor. Every damn time. Harmless thoughts, into broken, bloody images.

It was all he thought about. When will it end? Like torture.

He began threading new pendants onto the chain, each one a 'cross'.

One of brass, with a silver angel mounted into the middle, delicate vines and roses swirled the edges; a symbol, the rosary cross once on his old man's chain, the one he considered a father: Shiro, and the best chance in this world that he could of ever had. Had his life been in another's hands when he was little, he would of went from foster home to foster home; became ingrate of the system. But like the thorns, Shiro, a hard-laced Exorcist, and like the soft tender petals, nurtured his outrageous nature as a child. Loved him.

The second, and the shiniest of the three, a bright, unscratched silver, with Mary's immaculate figure moulded into the center. Like the veiled woman that she was, perfect in her ways, and in her imagery, so was Yukio. The second cross, the one from Yukio's rosary. One of his daily routines in the morning was polishing it before he left for class.

The white tie, that when tied correctly, bears a black cross on the knot, the one that exorcists wear with their 'Black Shirts', the formal uniform of the Japanese Exorcists, to make them appear as 'priests'. So pure and perfect. Like Yukio.

Ripped and soaked in blood. The silk tie crunched as he threw it in the trash.

He gritted his teeth, bringing a shaking wrist to his wet eye, and shivered, threading the last cross. Sick all of a sudden. The thoughts sometimes sickened him.

Plain and made of ebony wood, his cross, from the rosary given to him as a boy by Shiro... that he never wore. It described himself... this dark force. Everything about him was like that: He was a demon, he had an explicit history, notorious for getting to fights, arguing in school, he carried a sword with him everywhere; he had stabbed and killed his own brother with it.

Black eyes with only a teal outline.

He twitched, lashes batted quickly, angrily.

A loving person, he knew he was, much like his ocean blue eyes, but all the bad things he had done, resulted in this blackness, like the dark hair on his head and tail, like his fangs, his pointed ears, his cross bore his personality of the family- the black sheep. He put the chain of crosses over his head, now he had them with him, everywhere he went. He felt the small crosses pat against his chest, in and out from his gait. Walking to the boxes, and picking one of them up, the crosses laid on one of the top flaps and lazily moved side to side again, the ball-chain long, to where it hung just below his chest. Getting a last look at the new pendants on the chain, he made his way downstairs to set the box outside for the donation van.

Not just their memory, but much like their gravestones at the cemetery, he had their plot-markers around his neck. He couldn't help but add his own cross, for he was a part of the family, the last surviving member of the Fugimotos. His thoughts were tainted with scenes of Yukio's last hour, of blood and fire, and slowly, they were making him more numb as the days went by, numb to the grotesqueness, the reality: that the real world isn't pleasant. Instead it was a battlefield, between good and evil, and much like the dog tags once befitting the chain, his family, dead soldiers from this war. The war of humanity and the supernatural.

Being a Fugimoto. It meant imminent death. It meant blood, physical and emotional pain, darkness, and an unnaturally beautiful haze of blue flame. Like an angel.

For Satan, had in fact been an angel. A fallen one. And Rin would do everything he could to make sure this certain fallen angel would be put away where it could no longer move.

Like a god in the sky, Rin dreamed of a blue flame that would come down, and consume the evil. For as long as he was alive, he would fight to be that flame.

His world, even if ending with a fiery hand around his throat, if his body was iced over, frozen in time, burned alive so hot that it was cold, at least others would know he died trying to fulfill a righteous, justified, vengeance. A sickly sweet want. A want out of his loss, out of his love, out of his broken heart.

His soul felt like it was emptying out... ever so slowly becoming numb. And the worst part was: he knew, and he accepted it. And before long, he wouldn't have to force the numbness on his soul and mind to deal with the bloody memories of the loss of his twin brother... instead... his soul and mind would just be numb.

Until the end.