Chapter Text
No one knows Rin’s name anymore.
He honestly doesn’t remember when they stopped asking, or for that matter when they stopped remembering. He knows that somewhere down the line people stopped looking at him as the person he used to be and started to see something ancient and undefined. In a way, they were not wrong to look at him that way either; he was pretty damn old and he hardly counted as a simple half demon anymore.
Sometimes on his particularly dark days he thinks that it’s fitting that he’s not addressed by any real name anymore, because honestly Okumura Rin probably died with his friends and family in that first century of his life.
These days people just call him the “Blue Exorcist” and he never cares enough to correct them.
He was only fifteen when he found out he really was a demon (or half demon, he didn’t think it really mattered).
Suddenly all the instances throughout his child hood that people, who he used to take comfort in knowing they knew nothing about him, had leered in disgust and fear that he was a demon brought on a new meaning and power over his life.
Before he dismissed the word, now though… now it stuck. It clung to him like a second skin and he feared himself just as much as everyone else could ever.
But if Okumura Rin ever had a skill that no one knew about it was acting.
His shoulders felt heavy with the world, his reflection in the mirror made him want to cry, he was always tired because he never actually slept as well as he led everyone to believe, and he was scared.
What the hell did it mean to be half demon anyway? What secrets lie beneath his own skin besides the power of a flame he couldn’t quite control? Was there more about his own self he didn’t know about? Would he wake up one day and find out he was less human than he originally thought all over again?
It’s almost funny, unbelievable and sad in its own way, that no one ever suspected or noticed a thing. No one ever saw the million questions dancing behind his eyes and keeping him up at night. Rin was haunted by his own demon self and no one knew a thing.
As far as everyone else was concerned, Okumura Rin was that kind of guy that the world couldn’t keep down, a kid who smiled way too much and didn’t know how to take his life and all its implications seriously.
He was more than happy to encourage them to believe that.
Because the actual truth was much sadder.
When he turned twenty-one he swore he felt something inside himself switch off.
He never figured out how to properly explain the feeling to anyone and every time he tried his friends would just shoot him a funny look.
The best he could figure though was something was suddenly different inside him, a shift he couldn’t quite see yet.
It terrified him regardless.
He’s forty when he finally figures it out.
It’s a moment that he’ll never forget in all his years.
He was with his friends and his brother when he noticed the lines drawn across all their faces. They were all getting older and it was starting to show.
He had still felt the same though.
It scared him so much he remembers that he had suddenly excused himself, much to everyone’s concern, and ran to the bathroom.
It took them hours of trying to talk him into coming out before Ryuuji suddenly shouted something along the lines of, “To hell with it!” and picked the lock.
They found him curled up on the counter crying, keening like an animal, and staring at his face in the mirror like it’s cursed him.
“I still look twenty-one!” Rin was screaming when they hauled him away from the mirror.
There were no lines in his face.
They end up going to Mephisto, of all people, for an explanation.
They honestly didn’t expect to get a straight answer. After all everyone knew the demon liked his riddles.
It scared them all when instead of being smug like they all existed for his entertainment, he was quiet and uncharacteristically grim.
“Demons live in Assiah for as long as the bodies that house them can hold them.” Was all he said.
It was enough.
Because everyone knew Rin’s body would never deteriorate like other demons. He wasn’t possessing a body to exist in Assiah. He was the perfect mix between the two worlds.
Something inside him snapped at the realization.
He remembers Yukio holding him as he screamed and cried on the floor.
He would live forever.
He didn’t want forever.
The first of his friends to die was surprisingly Ryuugi at only fifty-eight years old.
It was a mission gone terribly wrong.
Rin held him in his arms while he died, he begged him to stay awake and pretended not to notice the light had left his eyes. He didn’t accept he was dead till they pried him off his body.
He had tried to stop the bleeding, there was so much blood, but in the end, it didn’t matter.
Help arrived much too late.
He burned his favorite blue coat to ashes after, he didn’t even want to try to get the stains out.
Konekomaru was next.
Grief over Bon’s death made him slow and uncaring. He died just months after Ryuuji.
Rin still blames the Vatican.
He knew Miwa was nowhere near ready to be going on missions again yet, he was drowning in grief and it was obvious.
He didn’t even know that he had went on a mission until he was brought back in a body bag.
Rin still isn’t sure which is worse: being there when they die or only get told long after the fact.
Miwa had been separated from the group he was with.
He died alone.
Izumo died at sixty of something as horrible and yet normal as cancer.
Rin held her hand as she flat lined.
Her last moments were spent crying.
She was in too much pain to put up a front and she didn’t want to die.
She had so much spirit left in her.
Renzou was seventy-one when he died in a car crash.
He was driving home from Rin’s house.
It had been Rin and Yukio’s birthday and they had hosted a small get together for it which had ran later than expected.
Rin hadn’t wanted to celebrate his birthday, he had started to hate the day but Yukio insisted.
Yukio was worried about the state of Rin’s mental health and thought something to cheer him up like a party was desperately in order.
Shima had insisted he could drive home just fine despite the hour and after wasting time arguing that he should just take a cab, Rin had finally relented and let him go.
He wishes he kept insisting.
He refused to ever celebrate his and Yukio’s birthday again.
Shiemi was eighty-three.
She had been possessed by a demon, it wasn’t the most surprising death. She had always been too easy to trust.
It was easily the worst death though and the image will probably always be burned in Rin’s mind.
It held an uncanny resemblance to Shiro’s death.
Seeing it happen to one person he loved nearly destroyed him.
Seeing it twice killed something inside of him.
Rin had been slowly changing with each death but after Shiemi’s he was never the same.
Shura somehow managed to die of old age.
It was a quiet and peaceful death. She just went to sleep one night and never woke back up.
It still hurt.
Yukio was 98.
He fell down the stairs.
Rin didn’t find him till hours later. He was still alive but barely.
He had been out on a mission and came back with groceries to prepare his little brother’s, even if these days he could pass as Rin’s grandpa, favorite meal.
He dropped the food when he found him and called an ambulance. It didn't matter in the end though, he passed away a couple hours later at the hospital.
He stopped cooking after that.
He stopped caring after that.
“Blue Exorcist.”
Rin stopped walking and shifted to look over his shoulder only to get a face full of Kuro’s fur. Kuro simply switched shoulders gracefully and without comment.
Rin pretended like he didn’t just forget he had his old familiar sitting on his shoulder.
Three thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine years old and he was still prone to being an empty minded idiot when he was hung over.
It was his birthday yesterday, and he had refused to be sober for it.
Kuro let out a low meow when it started to look like Rin was getting too deep in thought, it seemed like he did that more and more with each century. Sometimes it worked and Rin snapped out of it, other times though…times like now Rin just got distracted about something else.
In this case it was Kuro himself that caught Rin’s thoughts. Rin couldn’t help but think from time to time about how he didn’t look the same as he did in their first century together, the original cat he had been possessing had long since deteriorated as well as many more following after. This had to be well over his tenth possession by now…
Rin didn’t care as long as Kuro never left him.
He was all he had left.
“Blue Exorcist?” The person called again. One of the new higher ups Rin realized. He only knew her face though, not her name.
That wasn’t unusual though he’s bad about names these days…They were all so very temporary and sometimes it would feel like his head was just too full of faces and names. He’s not sure anymore who he should remember or who he should forget.
He supposes that it didn’t really matter either way, she was only a higher up on paper and everyone got by just fine not knowing his name so why should he bother.
Rin didn’t really answer to anyone anymore anyway and everyone knew that. He humored them because he had nothing better to do and they pretended like they actually had power over him. It was a strange system of balance that seemed like it shouldn’t work but did somehow.
“What is it?” Rin finally replied.
“You’re needed for a new mission. Everyone they’ve sent thus far hasn’t come back.”
“I see.”
“They’re calling it a suicide mission.”
“My favorite.”