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but you know you'd have taken the bullet if you saw it
After the cold of the last couple of days, the warming weather feels practically like a heat wave to Rin, dressed in his layers with sweat dripping from the tip of his nose as he stares across the distance at his brother, face pulled into a grimace of a smile, all sharp teeth and tired, but bright, eyes. As much as he's been practicing with a sword with the teachers he's managed to pick up along the way, none of it compares quite to standing across from Yukio, to being put against his style, so different from Rin's own. His guns.
The idea of blocking bullets with a katana is cool as hell, but Rin's quickly learning that, though he may indeed have improved, he's still living in real life, and not Rurouni fucking Kenshin.
He pants for breath again. What Yukio's giving him isn't a brief reprieve to catch his breath. Rin knows that much. After Rin had gotten hit with the first couple rounds of rubber bullets, he'd realized that they stung like a bitch Somehow, the minor irritation pissed him off more than a major wound in an actual fight. Suffice to say, he'd quickly picked up his pace enough to avoid the last few volleys.
Which meant Yukio was just figuring out a new plan to deal with him, from behind the glare of his glasses.
Rin lifts his shoulders again, shuffling his feet on the dusty floor of the empty and abandoned gymnasium they'd gotten a tip to use for this assessment. His tennis shoes squeak on the wood flooring.
He wonders if Yukio's learned what he needed to through this yet. His endurance isn't worn thin, but his patience is getting there. Rin isn't the type that can just throw himself into training for hours at a time or anything. He's not only stupid, but lazy; he's keenly aware of both flaws.
"Oi," he challenges, wiping at his forehead with the back of a hand. He tries to remember how many bullets Yukio keeps in his clips. He knows, from working with Rukia, that figuring that out might be his only chance to get close enough in for a good strike. As far as that goes, he only needs one against Yukio. In matters of speed, Yukio's isn't overwhelmingly greater than Rin's, though reaction time is different entirely. Rin just needs to get in close enough to make a last burst faster than Yukio's reload speed.
The idea of blocking bullets with a katana is cool as hell, but Rin's quickly learning that, though he may indeed have improved, he's still living in real life, and not Rurouni fucking Kenshin.
He pants for breath again. What Yukio's giving him isn't a brief reprieve to catch his breath. Rin knows that much. After Rin had gotten hit with the first couple rounds of rubber bullets, he'd realized that they stung like a bitch Somehow, the minor irritation pissed him off more than a major wound in an actual fight. Suffice to say, he'd quickly picked up his pace enough to avoid the last few volleys.
Which meant Yukio was just figuring out a new plan to deal with him, from behind the glare of his glasses.
Rin lifts his shoulders again, shuffling his feet on the dusty floor of the empty and abandoned gymnasium they'd gotten a tip to use for this assessment. His tennis shoes squeak on the wood flooring.
He wonders if Yukio's learned what he needed to through this yet. His endurance isn't worn thin, but his patience is getting there. Rin isn't the type that can just throw himself into training for hours at a time or anything. He's not only stupid, but lazy; he's keenly aware of both flaws.
"Oi," he challenges, wiping at his forehead with the back of a hand. He tries to remember how many bullets Yukio keeps in his clips. He knows, from working with Rukia, that figuring that out might be his only chance to get close enough in for a good strike. As far as that goes, he only needs one against Yukio. In matters of speed, Yukio's isn't overwhelmingly greater than Rin's, though reaction time is different entirely. Rin just needs to get in close enough to make a last burst faster than Yukio's reload speed.
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His temper, these days, is one that runs cold.
"That line could ruin you someday," Yukio informs him, the only sign of the disquiet in his chest shown with a curl of his lip as he steps forward, smearing the oil with the side of his sole, until the circle breaks.
"Mind your temper, nii-san."
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"Then just let me be ruined. It'd be the end of me, anyway. In one way or another."
With an angry lash of his tail, he bent to tuck the wooden practice sword away, nestled beside Kurikara in its holder. Rin turns his head to stare at Yukio over one shoulder. "I'm not interested in some game of mathematics where my value is determined by how many people I save, compared to how many people I hurt in the process."
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"Or do you really think that your life is only your own?"
Hands still fisted at his sides, Yukio stalks across the empty gymnasium, towards the shower and locker rooms. He can't stay still with his blood pounding like this. Sometimes, he feels... incapable of managing anything at all, in this city.
It's all wrong.
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Folding his swords in their carrier over his shoulder, he stood, folding his hands into the depths of his pockets. Turning, Rin faces Yukio, blue eyes angry and bright, compared to their usual deep color.
"Of course I want to defeat Satan. That's my goal. Mine, and a lot of other people's. I know that. But if I have to compromise myself to get there?" Rin wonders if he can do it. "If I start to do that, and I tell myself, I'm living my life for that goal alone, then I might as well just call myself less than human to begin with. Didn't our old man raise me better?"
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Yukio's jaw clenches, hanging onto words on the tip of his tongue. How was it, exactly, that their old man raised them? Raised Rin to be the compassionate brother, the one who upheld the beliefs that were easiest to put on a pedestal, to believe in the worthiness of humanity above all else, to raise Rin like he belonged in that group and held value for belonging to that group alone.
And raised Yukio to be the weapon. The one that didn't have a slope to slide down. The one who could do the dirtier work and bear the weight without cracking. Maybe he could... maybe he still can. But it's from a utilitarian perspective that Yukio fights — not a moral one.
Does that make him less than human? Is that how their father viewed him? (Why does that even matter? It doesn't. Shouldn't. Letting it would result in weakness.)
"You're being naive, nii-san," Yukio says, his mouth twitching at the corner, pent up frustration suddenly stoppered again, with no foreseeable outlet. He steps around Rin, towards the entrance of the gymnasium, his steps echoing in the wide emptiness of the room. "If you think an Exorcist's job is anything but compromise."
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He fists his hands at his side until his knuckles complain.
"Maybe. But I know enough to understand that the issue here isn't that I'm trying to become an Exorcist, Yukio. So what if it's true that that job is all about compromise? If it is, I'll have to do it differently, and make it work, for myself. Because I'm not just an Exorcist. I'm something else, too. You know it. I know it. Just because I couldn't admit it to myself until after the fight with the Impure King doesn't make it seem any less obvious to me now."
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"Nii-san, in the fourteen years I watched you before you learned of your identity, I have known what you are. I have known about the part of yourself that you only recently came to terms with. You are the same person now that you were back then. Putting an artificially high barrier simply because you now see the flames and the fire doesn't make sense. Do we not partner with demons every day in our work?" Yukio asks, shaking his head and wondering how his own brother can continue to be almost willfully oblivious. "There will come times when you need to protect yourself, and viewing humans as being better just because they're humans is illogical. It will only put you in danger."
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It makes him sick to the stomach t o think that this might have been the case for so long. For years. For half their lives. Half a lifetime that Yukio spent, knowing what Rin was.
The teeth, the tail, Rin wonders how much they're just sore reminders of what Yukio'd always seen in him.
While he'd been locked completely out of the truth.
"If I'm the same person now as I was then, what exactly do you think of me? Huh? Because what I remember is," he finishes, with a hard look in bright eyes. "A demon that nobody trusted, who only destroyed things, who only hurt people. To everyone but dad, that's what I was. I don't ever want to be that again. Even if it means things come to that."
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The view that Rin has of recent history is biased. The one that he has of their childhood, skewed. Yukio doesn't know how to throw that in relief without bringing up things... things their father never wanted Rin to see. Excursions that still make Yukio give pause, not sure if Rin is ready to see them, or if there might be some impossible means through which Yukio can keep up this separation. The dichotomy between demons and humans is best protected when Rin goes up against enemies like the Impure King, so twisted and bubbling over with its miasma.
Against Toudou, Rin wouldn't...
"I remember you as my brother," Yukio says, voice strained. "One who would never lift a finger against me to hurt me."
If dad saw you as a son, what did he see me as?
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Is there something that he's missing? Is there something that he isn't seeing? Maybe he's still blind, next to Yukio. Maybe there's still something outside of his reach, even after he'd pulled that sword a year ago.
"But it scares me. Maybe I'm over being terrified of those flames, but there's more there. To be afraid of. You can't expect me to just put everything behind me at once. I haven't had my whole life to figure all of this out."
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If there's one thing that Toudou was right about, it's the fact that Yukio resents it even now, the ease with which he can make the calculation to raise a gun up to his brother's head. The fact that Yukio can understand every single number that the Vatican crunches.
He hates it, he hates it, but it's all he's good for. It's the only thing he can bring to the table, given his skills, given how he's been shaped.
Somewhere in the distance, a basketball bounces and rolls its way into the corner, knocked free of the cart that held it.
"When I held that gun up to your head," he murmurs, "in that moment, were you more afraid of what you were, or more afraid of me?"
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"I wasn't afraid of anything," Rin admits. "Maybe it's because I'm an idiot that that's true, but I know it is. Because I know how I felt in that moment. Like it's burned into my brain. I didn't feel afraid. I just felt angry. Angry at you because it hurt. Hurt more than anything I'd ever felt, besides dad dying. Because I thought ... that's not Yukio. That's not my brother. He wasn't raised that way. I thought, how dare you hold that gun up and lie to me like that, just to make your point. I thought, how dare anyone put you in a position like that. I don't really care if I die, Yukio, but if it was your hand that did it ... you'd never forgive yourself."
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He won't point out that he was raised to be that and more. Raised to actually pull the trigger, to keep his brother on close watch, to be capable of stopping Rin should anything cause him to tip over. Frankly, Yukio hasn't gotten there yet, in spite of his training, in spite of his skill. Too much hesitation.
He has to hone it down, even if it means putting Rin in that position of being betrayed again.
"I told you. That won't be the last time you hear those words. From people. Possibly those you even know. And brushing that over with some arbitrary rule you've decided upon won't help anyone."
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Well, it's fucking hard, Rin thinks, to aim when nobody will even tell you where the target is. When it still feels like he's being fed everything too little, too late. He wonders if Yukio can even understand. Feeling quite so locked out.
Even out of your family's life.
"I'm not brushing anything over," Rin says, grinbding his teeth but moving out of Yukio's way He's made his point. And he's already released some of his frustration. "This isn't about me, being afraid of what other people will say and do This is me being afraid of me. And me, making choices. For myself. Even if you think they're shit choices, they're mine."
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For someone who cares so much about others, Yukio wonders how his brother manages to be so self-focused.
Then again, if it weren't for the secrets their father kept, maybe it wouldn't be like this.
"But, fine. They're your choices. Do what you want," says Yukio, pushing the heavy door of the gymnasium open and starting to stalk out, his steps clear and echoing in the hallway.