sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 01:04:45 UTC
She had planned on going that night, lurking in the shadows and creeping along alley walls until she could smell him, until she could see him, reach out and grab a shoulder and drive her fist between his eyes and dig her knuckles beneath his ribs, her heels digging points into his feet. Ruby doesn't really want to hurt him - not that she minds it - but there is a definite perk to besting someone who is both taller and has a certain advantage on the supernatural side of things. She's never fought a vampire before, and while verbal throw downs are enough to keep her interested for a certain amount of time, there is a part of Ruby that is primitively physical, that craves violence, that wants to fight. It's the part of her that wears her eyes black when she's been pushed too far.
Ruby doesn't stop to pause and adjust her steps as she slips through the darkness too many nights later, after picking up Angel's trail and following it like a bloodhound. When she licks her lips, she can feel the sting of split skin, and when she bends her knuckles they pop in ways that would feel unnatural for a human. Her reaction is to grin, a sharp knife in the blunt darkness, and reach out with a flourish of her wrist.
Her sleeve slides back, and her grip is deceptively strong when she reaches out. Despite fighting and losing - although she is more than loathe to admit it - to the peri a day ago, her reactions are fast while the body is tired and sore, still recovering on City time. "Gotcha," she says, just a voice in the dark, her tone low and quiet, almost a whisper but for the weight behind it. She doesn't wait for him to react or turn, pushing Angel with sudden force and intent, light gleaming off of her teeth as she smiles.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 01:37:49 UTC
Patrols are necessary now that Connor is gone. Angel once left his son to these activities, allowing him to enjoy the fact that he had some use in the City. But now that he's gone, he knows he must pick up the slack, lurking in the shadows, hoping that he doesn't find someone in pain, but almost always expecting it; the City is not afraid to draw in all types of people. It is not afraid of bringing them in and allowing them to cause pain, even where others may live, walk, sleep, on a regular basis. He has first hand, second hand-more than enough experience with it.
Deities they may be, but their actions are all too familiar.
But it is on these patrols that his mind tends to drift. While may be sharp, ready for the cry of a victim, he does fit the brooding persona. It is not the first time that the lurker has been caught because of this, and it won't be the last. He catches a whiff of the different scent-different, because it is not human but not quite something else-before he hears the sharp tone of Ruby's voice and feels the attack from behind. He lurches forward, stumbling a bit before swiftly turning. In true fashion, the long coat he wears jerks smoothly in the air as he takes in the view of his assailant.
"You won the first challenge," he says, shifting his footing and lunging toward her quickly to grab hold of the front of her shirt. Angel thinks that it may not be a bad idea to not play dirty immediately, but that will give Ruby the advantage.
And while he's sure he'll still win, he doesn't have anyone to patch up the wounds he tends to get from these things.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 02:04:08 UTC
Her eyebrows jump and the balls of her feet press into the ground as she shifts to the side, trying to get some sort of tactical or balanced advantage while trying to twist out of his grip. She's laughing, some low-pitched obnoxious sound as she wraps the fingers of one hand around around his wrist and makes to headbutt him, the world rushing by in a swirl of blonde hair and streaking neon light from far off advertisements.
"The first challenge? Ha," she breathes, still mocking and laughing, even as she miscalculates with the headbutt and has to go with jerking her head back to get it out of his way. Ruby feels the blade at her thigh pressing against her skin through her jeans, hot and heavy and the hilt humming as she yanks away from him as best she can and pulls her fist back to make aim for his face. Going for the knife is going in dirty, and although Ruby has no honor, no sense of dignity for these things, she's not willing to end a good fight before it's over when she really wants it.
Like a human, she doesn't like to talk when she fights, finds it hard to keep air in the lungs of something as debilitating as a body, even if her stamina compared to others is something to be marveled. In the quiet moments between grapples, between her hand reaching for his shoulder and her legs moving backward, giving her enough space to throw a knee toward his abdomen, there's no immediate rush of air, no sound that she or he is tired at all. He's faster than her, and she has to actively try to keep up, but she's a bound and determined type of person, and even if she finds herself on the ground she's going to get back up until she can't, even if she tastes blood in her mouth or can't see because of it.
It's not like Angel has the power to make her cough herself up, and Ruby is pissed off enough this week to think she has a good chance, moving in for that knee to the gut, putting her full weight behind it, and smiling as she moves.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 02:47:44 UTC
The decision to let her just attack is an easy one. Angel shifts to the defense to watch her actions, but his defense is an offensive one, taking a hit, taking another, before swinging in and slamming his fist into her jaw. Swift and seamless, it's apparent that he has been fighting for years, that this is what some would consider to be "like breathing." Only Angel doesn't have that inhibition.
A part of him is surprised at the strength she shows, but he notes quickly that she is not strong enough. She is also weakened to some degree, her movements jerky and forceful, but still revealing it. "I'm not your first fight in a while, am I?" he says finally, taking her foot as it aims for him and doing what he can to twist her toward a wall. "You should have come to me feeling a little better, Ruby."
While he does not mind a silent fight, he can tell how much she is struggling. Angel knows that his ability to speak, to look resilient despite the occasional pinching up of his face, is enough to frustrate her. He wonders when she will possibly show that knife she showed off at their previous meeting-and with it, he'll show her how vampires are from his world. As of right now, he is keeping up this hand to hand combat, jumping back when she recovers from his previous attack, and ready to play the offensive defense depending on how it goes.
She wants to win, though. He can tell. Angel only wonders why.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 05:25:35 UTC
Stars don't explode. Colors don't pop and flare. Her teeth rattle in her mouth and her tongue tastes blood, little rivulets of red sinking between her teeth like water: technicalities, automatic sensations. Ruby smiles around a mouthful of copper, moving with the inertia of the blow, turning her body in a circle to come back at him, that leg raised, her smile gone and substituted for focus. She spends a lot of her time thinking - her humanity, the people she's come across, her goals, what she has to do in order to stay one step ahead of the game, her mistakes - but when she's moving like this there's a clarity, a distinct silence in her unclouded head.
Which he promptly ruins by opening his big, fat mouth. Even Tammi had waited until the silence between her fist hitting Ruby's face and Ruby's back hitting the floor had needed filled. In Hell silence is irrelevant. No one stopped screaming in Hell long enough for silence to even enter the realm of possibility. Ruby throws whatever rules or ideas she has about the concept out the window as she moves away from his attack, one hand braced against the wall to push herself off of it. There's a line across her torso where the body's ribs pull, and she knows that she has to be careful in this skin if she wants to keep it.
She circles him like a dog, her head down, boots clicking against the uneven ground. "If you keep talking like that I'm gonna start thinking you're concerned about me, Angel," she says without a smile, turning her head to spit blood out of her mouth. Her fingers linger around the knife at her leg, brushing over the familiar grip. But no dice. She doesn't roll. No seizing the day. She just charges him again with a well-placed kick, meant to catch him in the abdomen.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 06:32:00 UTC
The smell of the blood is a little disorienting, making him pause long enough after she spits it out to make him feel the kick and stumble back. But Angel has fought humans, bleeding from the mouth and other extremities, and while he's hiding the fiercer side of himself just barely, he holds on; that's a part of the big finale, the part where she certainly brings out that weapon and forces him to fight seriously. Ruby wants this, and with her words are just filler, her actions speaking louder than anything.
"It probably isn't up to standard if you're injured, that's all," he says, taking a few steps back. "But maybe that's why you're trying so hard." A quick flash of a smile before he slides in closer, his feet barely touching the ground as he twists and ducks down to almost slash his elbow at her midsection. It puts him at the disadvantage, he knows, but whether it connects or not, he's already turning to kick a leg out at her again-in the same part of her body. Knock the wind out of her when she's already weakened, and the strength he's using behind his attacks isn't restrained.
However she attacks next, he knows it won't be long. The weapon she's carrying on her is a knife; for all the times he's had that happen, he can live, he'll keep fighting, his own strength and prowess pushing him along despite the gained aches and pains from this fight.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 07:02:54 UTC
Ruby's spine jerks upright and then bends forward as she angles her torso away from his elbow, her mouth dropping open in an O of concentration, breath panting in a warm steam in front of her. The motion is enough to leave her just as open as he's managed to leave himself, and the naked realization of what's coming her way hits her like a bag of bones before she can even react. If she hadn't fought with Ishiah, hadn't lost to Ishiah, then this wouldn't be happening. She would have Angel on his back, her boot on his throat, smug satisfaction and an 'I told you so' grin tipping up the corners of her mouth.
But Ruby did fight with Ishiah, and she did lose, and although she manages to grab him, yank him, sink her fingers in, an elbow sent to his face, Angel's kick still manages to connect and connect hard. It catches her in the gut, sends her sprawling back against the wall, her back catching it hard and the impact pushing the air out of her lungs. She still has the energy to stay upright, to glare hotly, strong enough to burn metal, her eyes blacker than fresh coal, licking deliberately at the blood that's spilled over the swell of her bottom lip, slow and calculated.
"Get that smile off of your face and quit deluding yourself," she eventually remarks, her palms flat on the wall so that she can shove her off. There's an almost-stumble there somewhere, overexerted from two hard fights in two days. The body can't handle it, and if she's not careful, she's going to break it. She's gotten to the point where she considers the meat she wears some far off china doll on a shelf, kept necessarily safe so that she never loses it, never has to get rid of it. It has become her: her skin, her hair, her bone, her blood. Her smile is back, a quick one mirroring his. "You're pretty tough. I was expecting something a little more boring."
When she comes at him with the knife, it's surprisingly quick for someone who's just hit a wall as hard as she has, but Ruby doesn't pull up, and she doesn't pull back, and even though she's hardly going for anything more than a slash, nothing serious, nothing crippling, she aims and strikes with purpose, serpentine in her movements, controlled and outside of herself.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 08:55:29 UTC
While it isn't a deep gash, the pain he's been feeling exacerbates to the point of him changing, his features shifting and his fangs showing. He knows there are times when he has been in greater pain than this; Angel is no stranger to torture, to greater fights than this, but he wants to end this quickly. He is not trying as hard as he could be, and he wonders if she realizes it. The choice to take the defense, the few attacks directed toward her that were direct-the moment they fell into a pattern, it was her pattern, her drive, her tiring herself out.
In a way, Ruby lost this fight all on her own.
"Funny," he says as he reaches out, grabbing the wrist just below the flashing knife, "I was expecting a bit of a challenge. Are you only good at tag?" Angel knows how brittle she currently appears, and he shifts up against her quickly, moving to slam her back into the wall again. He uses his strength to hold her arm up against the wall, so that the back of her palm scratches against the bumpy surface.
Angel looks down at her from this angle, loose hand grabbing her other one as he holds her in place against the wall. "You should have rested up. This wasn't even fair." Even if the words could easily be once taken as noble, his tone is anything but; the feel of the fight is still there, as indicated by the teeth barred and the furrowed forehead.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 09:23:22 UTC
She's surprised but only for a moment and only in a way that spells amusement before it's wiped away but sudden motion, something like a grunt moving past her lips as the breath is pushed out of her again along with all the noise she's got left in her throat. The skin on the back of her hand pulls back and she feels all the tiny little indentations the rocks leave in her flesh, but she doesn't let go of her knife, fingers curled around it tight enough to leave her knuckles bone white.
Though she doesn't like having to look up at anyone, Ruby makes a great show of it, watching him from under a heavy brow, seeing through the blonde gaps in her hair as her eyes roll back to blue. Her legs are free to move, even though it's difficult, and she quickly gets back on her toes again, her arms pinned as they are. "Bite me," she says - and that's hilarious, all things considered: her current position, the healing gash on her forearm, hidden by her long sleeves - and then slips her booted ankle around the back of his calf and moves to knock her forehead as hard as she can against his.
It doesn't hurt. The pain barely registers. The body will bruise, but she'll barely notice the ache. Even if it's a vain move, a pointless move, it's a way for her to assert herself, to establish that winning doesn't mean he has power over her, that losing doesn't mean he knows anything more about her, that whatever physical pain he's caused her, it will never amount to the kind of torture she endured and inflicted in Hell.
Ruby's breathing hard when she says, "Are you gonna do something or are you just gonna stand here all day and think about it?"
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 09:41:21 UTC
Blood, blood, blood-the smell of it is almost overwhelming, only emphasized further when her head slams against his forehead. The pain courses through him and it takes everything to keep him from responding violently, from ripping her arm down and forcing the knife from her hand. Safe, it's all to safe, as he holds on to that self-control. It's a struggle he has to go through every day. Little cuts, little circumstances, but it's all too visible with how she is right now.
He visibly snarls at her for a moment-that little bit of control lost-before he tugs back away from her, freeing her from his grip and putting some distance between them. He isn't going to finish this, because that's something he decided long before hand. Because he has no desire to see her die, and he has no desire to see her shift, taking over a new body because she's barely keeping herself together. Angel shows that he's still holding on as his features contort to their normal state, a strained expression taking hold of his features like he barely maintains these features.
But he still won. Just as it means nothing for her, it means nothing for him. A fight, spar, a gash on his chest and another ruined shirt-it's nothing like Los Angeles, nothing like the torture and pain he's been through. If anything, the whole thing feels a little empty.
"Fight's over, Ruby," he says, glancing down over the body. "I'm guessing that if the body dies, you have to find a new one? I don't like that idea very much. You shouldn't have come after me, but I'm gonna guess that you did because you lost the other one, so this one must be a sure win. Am I right?" Angel closes in on the distance a little, as he attempts to overpower the loss of control at the little bits of blood flowing from her body. "And I didn't even have to think too hard to figure that one out."
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 09:55:28 UTC
Her boots clack to the ground abruptly but she retains her balance like she's little more than a cat, knees bent and head down, her hair a pale mess around her disheveled face. There's something electric about a fight, no matter your own personal outcome, and she feels eighty miles high, sulfuric blood beating a little faster against her skin, her pulse heavy in her own ears. Her breathing comes raggedly, too, strained much the same way it had been when she'd fought Tammi, so long ago.
But she smiles, something small and private to herself, her claws sinking in to that tiny loss of control on Angel's part, that small falter, that hiccup in his step. She has the same effect on Castiel at times, that ability to push him just a little bit too far over the threshold. One day it's going to get her killed. One day that polar opposite is going to clap his hands and get rid of her. Ruby likes taking her chances until then, and Angel is very much a lesser threat. He can't kill her with his bare hands, can't send her to Hell, and even if he can piss her off, she can shove him back, too.
It's a good mask for her own problems right now, a warped sense of self-destruction and the constant aching for something to break. Ruby is mad, filled with bitter anger that nestles up under her ribs, burning bright and hot. She feels better now that she's expelled some of the energy, even if the body is going to pay the price.
His words give her pause, and she narrows her eyes but doesn't let them fade darker than they already are. "You didn't blow the whistle, chief," she eventually says as she flicks her knife - her knife - back into the strap at her thigh, "and my being involved in another fight's got nothing to do with you. I'm capable of being businesslike, after all." She looks up at him, mouth pressed into a thin line, face flat with honesty for once before she dabs at a tender spot above her eyebrow with her index finger. It comes back red. "You assume too much, especially about yourself."
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 10:12:16 UTC
"About myself?" The phrasing of the statement is curious. Although Angel has quite a bit to say, fast remarks about how that fight had everything to do with this one, he doesn't point it out. Less desperation would have made this fight better for her; she would have been stronger, faster, smarter, less blinded and able to figure out his own strategy. She would have been able to figure out that he was being careful, cautious, as if he could easily tell that one wrong move would have pushed her body over the edge. "Why don't you tell me, then, Ruby?"
Angel does acknowledge that in some situations, he would have lost this fight. But he understands her limitations. Even if she is unnaturally strong, she is not like a slayer, resilient in the same way. What holds her together is pure determination, what drives her forward is the fact that she needs to do this, needs to be right-a fight doesn't answer all the facets of a person's personality, but it's fairly obvious to him what she's like. In a way, Ruby's desperation reminds him a little of Faith; just as cutting and direct, though with less humanity.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 30 2009, 10:28:17 UTC
Fast fingers move through her hair, snagging in snarls and pulling out pebble and dirt from where her head had collided with the wall. Her palm feels sticky with sweat, but she doesn't register it. Sweat is such an insubstantial thing, for insubstantial people. She doesn't feel hot, and the perspiration she wipes off of her forehead with the blood there is just another thing, another product of what she wears.
For half a beat, she does look up at him, one corner of her mouth curled and turned in, like she's contemplating. She has only ever shared anything at all personal with Dean, without provocation anyway, and the situation then had been more than dire - she had needed his trust and she had needed him to understand and she had needed him to know that Sam needed to be ready. This is different. What can Angel offer her?
Nothing.
"Why don't you go suck on a railroad spike?" She moves then, not gingerly, not cautiously, but slowly, drawing each step out as if it's deliberate. Her spine feels crooked and her ribs hum with a deep sort of ache. Fighting with a peri and then a vampire, even if she is older than the latter, back to back is a bad idea, even for a demon. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as per usual, by the time she moves by him and turns to face him, one hip canted to the side. "Or do you just want to try guessing?"
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 30 2009, 19:28:19 UTC
Her statement surprises him a little, what with its connection to Spike-but Angel doesn't take the bait. It occurs to him quickly that his little inquiry means more than he initially thought. Her change of posture, the moving closer, there's something indicated that he's not quite grasping. His eyebrows raise at her question, but still, he doesn't take the bait.
Whatever it is, she's chosen to make this serious, to make it more than an off-comment about how he doesn't always understand her, isn't always able to parse out the meaning. He knows it's true, but this digs deeper.
"I thought I was bad at guessing games," Angel tells her. She has chosen to close the distance, so he takes a step closer, challenging her, showing the control that he has once again over the scent of blood. "Maybe you could give me a clue, something more than 'you always have it wrong'. Of course, I don't think I always do." He pulls his shoulders up for a casual shrug. "Sometimes, of course, but not always. Then again, it isn't about me being wrong, is it? It's about you having the answers, of being right. And really, your age isn't showing."
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelblackeyedskankMay 31 2009, 03:46:11 UTC
Coming from the world that she does, everything is weighted to mean more than it might seem initially. Tiny movements and motions can cause huge ripples, smashing too many butterflies under your boots can change the fate of the world around you, and one statement, one question asked, can mean one million different things in all the grand schemes. Every conversation that Ruby has is loaded, the words heavy. She's so used to treating every sentence, every punctuation mark as a potential threat or means to comprehend more that her immediate reaction is defensive.
That, and she is a complete bitch.
She keeps her arms crossed, elbows drawn close to her body, her leg jutted out so that it meets the ground at an angle. Though she might look beat to hell, Ruby has a fascinating way of keeping all her bones upright, and though the look of disgust has faded from her face somewhat, she still does not, by any stretch of the word, look pleased. It would be easy to brush him off and literally disappear from under his nose, and it would be easy to insult him, but if there's one quality that is amplified by being a demon, it's curiosity. There are things Ruby doesn't understand - her begrudging relationship with Dean, why Sam cares whether she lives or dies - and the more time she spends among people, the more time she wants to why.
So she asks: "Why do you care?" Her voice tilts up at the end, prickly and defensive, and she stands like she's holding a great prize hidden underneath her jacket, something to keep safe and hide away from all the eyes out there.
sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angelatonerMay 31 2009, 04:36:10 UTC
The one time Angel isn't quick to read between the lines, to seek answers from nothing, she adds in that meaning. It is better that he does not take the bait as he falls into the normal way of perceiving things-think first, excessively so, and ask questions later, after he's managed to put two and two together and add up to many different variations of four.
His current conclusion is close to the mark: she's defensive. She's slipped up, and if he had played his cards correctly, maybe he could have pulled more from this. But Angel doubts this. Had he changed his remark, she would still be aiming for control, aiming because she is defensive. Ruby has to attack first, smug and proud, until those attacks are impossible, and then the wall slowly climbs around her.
And that, too, is familiar.
"Well, I'd say it's because you made it clear that there's more than just that. That's why I care. I'm curious, and we interact frequently enough for that to be natural. But what's more interesting is this." Angel steps closer to her, closer still, until there's only a little bit of distance between them. He hopes she doesn't needlessly lash out. She got the last hit in, after all-and given how things go, isn't that enough for her? "That I even need to tell you, and that you aren't answering it yourself. Why is that?"
Ruby doesn't stop to pause and adjust her steps as she slips through the darkness too many nights later, after picking up Angel's trail and following it like a bloodhound. When she licks her lips, she can feel the sting of split skin, and when she bends her knuckles they pop in ways that would feel unnatural for a human. Her reaction is to grin, a sharp knife in the blunt darkness, and reach out with a flourish of her wrist.
Her sleeve slides back, and her grip is deceptively strong when she reaches out. Despite fighting and losing - although she is more than loathe to admit it - to the peri a day ago, her reactions are fast while the body is tired and sore, still recovering on City time. "Gotcha," she says, just a voice in the dark, her tone low and quiet, almost a whisper but for the weight behind it. She doesn't wait for him to react or turn, pushing Angel with sudden force and intent, light gleaming off of her teeth as she smiles.
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Deities they may be, but their actions are all too familiar.
But it is on these patrols that his mind tends to drift. While may be sharp, ready for the cry of a victim, he does fit the brooding persona. It is not the first time that the lurker has been caught because of this, and it won't be the last. He catches a whiff of the different scent-different, because it is not human but not quite something else-before he hears the sharp tone of Ruby's voice and feels the attack from behind. He lurches forward, stumbling a bit before swiftly turning. In true fashion, the long coat he wears jerks smoothly in the air as he takes in the view of his assailant.
"You won the first challenge," he says, shifting his footing and lunging toward her quickly to grab hold of the front of her shirt. Angel thinks that it may not be a bad idea to not play dirty immediately, but that will give Ruby the advantage.
And while he's sure he'll still win, he doesn't have anyone to patch up the wounds he tends to get from these things.
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"The first challenge? Ha," she breathes, still mocking and laughing, even as she miscalculates with the headbutt and has to go with jerking her head back to get it out of his way. Ruby feels the blade at her thigh pressing against her skin through her jeans, hot and heavy and the hilt humming as she yanks away from him as best she can and pulls her fist back to make aim for his face. Going for the knife is going in dirty, and although Ruby has no honor, no sense of dignity for these things, she's not willing to end a good fight before it's over when she really wants it.
Like a human, she doesn't like to talk when she fights, finds it hard to keep air in the lungs of something as debilitating as a body, even if her stamina compared to others is something to be marveled. In the quiet moments between grapples, between her hand reaching for his shoulder and her legs moving backward, giving her enough space to throw a knee toward his abdomen, there's no immediate rush of air, no sound that she or he is tired at all. He's faster than her, and she has to actively try to keep up, but she's a bound and determined type of person, and even if she finds herself on the ground she's going to get back up until she can't, even if she tastes blood in her mouth or can't see because of it.
It's not like Angel has the power to make her cough herself up, and Ruby is pissed off enough this week to think she has a good chance, moving in for that knee to the gut, putting her full weight behind it, and smiling as she moves.
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A part of him is surprised at the strength she shows, but he notes quickly that she is not strong enough. She is also weakened to some degree, her movements jerky and forceful, but still revealing it. "I'm not your first fight in a while, am I?" he says finally, taking her foot as it aims for him and doing what he can to twist her toward a wall. "You should have come to me feeling a little better, Ruby."
While he does not mind a silent fight, he can tell how much she is struggling. Angel knows that his ability to speak, to look resilient despite the occasional pinching up of his face, is enough to frustrate her. He wonders when she will possibly show that knife she showed off at their previous meeting-and with it, he'll show her how vampires are from his world. As of right now, he is keeping up this hand to hand combat, jumping back when she recovers from his previous attack, and ready to play the offensive defense depending on how it goes.
She wants to win, though. He can tell. Angel only wonders why.
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Which he promptly ruins by opening his big, fat mouth. Even Tammi had waited until the silence between her fist hitting Ruby's face and Ruby's back hitting the floor had needed filled. In Hell silence is irrelevant. No one stopped screaming in Hell long enough for silence to even enter the realm of possibility. Ruby throws whatever rules or ideas she has about the concept out the window as she moves away from his attack, one hand braced against the wall to push herself off of it. There's a line across her torso where the body's ribs pull, and she knows that she has to be careful in this skin if she wants to keep it.
She circles him like a dog, her head down, boots clicking against the uneven ground. "If you keep talking like that I'm gonna start thinking you're concerned about me, Angel," she says without a smile, turning her head to spit blood out of her mouth. Her fingers linger around the knife at her leg, brushing over the familiar grip. But no dice. She doesn't roll. No seizing the day. She just charges him again with a well-placed kick, meant to catch him in the abdomen.
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"It probably isn't up to standard if you're injured, that's all," he says, taking a few steps back. "But maybe that's why you're trying so hard." A quick flash of a smile before he slides in closer, his feet barely touching the ground as he twists and ducks down to almost slash his elbow at her midsection. It puts him at the disadvantage, he knows, but whether it connects or not, he's already turning to kick a leg out at her again-in the same part of her body. Knock the wind out of her when she's already weakened, and the strength he's using behind his attacks isn't restrained.
However she attacks next, he knows it won't be long. The weapon she's carrying on her is a knife; for all the times he's had that happen, he can live, he'll keep fighting, his own strength and prowess pushing him along despite the gained aches and pains from this fight.
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But Ruby did fight with Ishiah, and she did lose, and although she manages to grab him, yank him, sink her fingers in, an elbow sent to his face, Angel's kick still manages to connect and connect hard. It catches her in the gut, sends her sprawling back against the wall, her back catching it hard and the impact pushing the air out of her lungs. She still has the energy to stay upright, to glare hotly, strong enough to burn metal, her eyes blacker than fresh coal, licking deliberately at the blood that's spilled over the swell of her bottom lip, slow and calculated.
"Get that smile off of your face and quit deluding yourself," she eventually remarks, her palms flat on the wall so that she can shove her off. There's an almost-stumble there somewhere, overexerted from two hard fights in two days. The body can't handle it, and if she's not careful, she's going to break it. She's gotten to the point where she considers the meat she wears some far off china doll on a shelf, kept necessarily safe so that she never loses it, never has to get rid of it. It has become her: her skin, her hair, her bone, her blood. Her smile is back, a quick one mirroring his. "You're pretty tough. I was expecting something a little more boring."
When she comes at him with the knife, it's surprisingly quick for someone who's just hit a wall as hard as she has, but Ruby doesn't pull up, and she doesn't pull back, and even though she's hardly going for anything more than a slash, nothing serious, nothing crippling, she aims and strikes with purpose, serpentine in her movements, controlled and outside of herself.
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In a way, Ruby lost this fight all on her own.
"Funny," he says as he reaches out, grabbing the wrist just below the flashing knife, "I was expecting a bit of a challenge. Are you only good at tag?" Angel knows how brittle she currently appears, and he shifts up against her quickly, moving to slam her back into the wall again. He uses his strength to hold her arm up against the wall, so that the back of her palm scratches against the bumpy surface.
Angel looks down at her from this angle, loose hand grabbing her other one as he holds her in place against the wall. "You should have rested up. This wasn't even fair." Even if the words could easily be once taken as noble, his tone is anything but; the feel of the fight is still there, as indicated by the teeth barred and the furrowed forehead.
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Though she doesn't like having to look up at anyone, Ruby makes a great show of it, watching him from under a heavy brow, seeing through the blonde gaps in her hair as her eyes roll back to blue. Her legs are free to move, even though it's difficult, and she quickly gets back on her toes again, her arms pinned as they are. "Bite me," she says - and that's hilarious, all things considered: her current position, the healing gash on her forearm, hidden by her long sleeves - and then slips her booted ankle around the back of his calf and moves to knock her forehead as hard as she can against his.
It doesn't hurt. The pain barely registers. The body will bruise, but she'll barely notice the ache. Even if it's a vain move, a pointless move, it's a way for her to assert herself, to establish that winning doesn't mean he has power over her, that losing doesn't mean he knows anything more about her, that whatever physical pain he's caused her, it will never amount to the kind of torture she endured and inflicted in Hell.
Ruby's breathing hard when she says, "Are you gonna do something or are you just gonna stand here all day and think about it?"
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He visibly snarls at her for a moment-that little bit of control lost-before he tugs back away from her, freeing her from his grip and putting some distance between them. He isn't going to finish this, because that's something he decided long before hand. Because he has no desire to see her die, and he has no desire to see her shift, taking over a new body because she's barely keeping herself together. Angel shows that he's still holding on as his features contort to their normal state, a strained expression taking hold of his features like he barely maintains these features.
But he still won. Just as it means nothing for her, it means nothing for him. A fight, spar, a gash on his chest and another ruined shirt-it's nothing like Los Angeles, nothing like the torture and pain he's been through. If anything, the whole thing feels a little empty.
"Fight's over, Ruby," he says, glancing down over the body. "I'm guessing that if the body dies, you have to find a new one? I don't like that idea very much. You shouldn't have come after me, but I'm gonna guess that you did because you lost the other one, so this one must be a sure win. Am I right?" Angel closes in on the distance a little, as he attempts to overpower the loss of control at the little bits of blood flowing from her body. "And I didn't even have to think too hard to figure that one out."
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But she smiles, something small and private to herself, her claws sinking in to that tiny loss of control on Angel's part, that small falter, that hiccup in his step. She has the same effect on Castiel at times, that ability to push him just a little bit too far over the threshold. One day it's going to get her killed. One day that polar opposite is going to clap his hands and get rid of her. Ruby likes taking her chances until then, and Angel is very much a lesser threat. He can't kill her with his bare hands, can't send her to Hell, and even if he can piss her off, she can shove him back, too.
It's a good mask for her own problems right now, a warped sense of self-destruction and the constant aching for something to break. Ruby is mad, filled with bitter anger that nestles up under her ribs, burning bright and hot. She feels better now that she's expelled some of the energy, even if the body is going to pay the price.
His words give her pause, and she narrows her eyes but doesn't let them fade darker than they already are. "You didn't blow the whistle, chief," she eventually says as she flicks her knife - her knife - back into the strap at her thigh, "and my being involved in another fight's got nothing to do with you. I'm capable of being businesslike, after all." She looks up at him, mouth pressed into a thin line, face flat with honesty for once before she dabs at a tender spot above her eyebrow with her index finger. It comes back red. "You assume too much, especially about yourself."
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Angel does acknowledge that in some situations, he would have lost this fight. But he understands her limitations. Even if she is unnaturally strong, she is not like a slayer, resilient in the same way. What holds her together is pure determination, what drives her forward is the fact that she needs to do this, needs to be right-a fight doesn't answer all the facets of a person's personality, but it's fairly obvious to him what she's like. In a way, Ruby's desperation reminds him a little of Faith; just as cutting and direct, though with less humanity.
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For half a beat, she does look up at him, one corner of her mouth curled and turned in, like she's contemplating. She has only ever shared anything at all personal with Dean, without provocation anyway, and the situation then had been more than dire - she had needed his trust and she had needed him to understand and she had needed him to know that Sam needed to be ready. This is different. What can Angel offer her?
Nothing.
"Why don't you go suck on a railroad spike?" She moves then, not gingerly, not cautiously, but slowly, drawing each step out as if it's deliberate. Her spine feels crooked and her ribs hum with a deep sort of ache. Fighting with a peri and then a vampire, even if she is older than the latter, back to back is a bad idea, even for a demon. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as per usual, by the time she moves by him and turns to face him, one hip canted to the side. "Or do you just want to try guessing?"
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Whatever it is, she's chosen to make this serious, to make it more than an off-comment about how he doesn't always understand her, isn't always able to parse out the meaning. He knows it's true, but this digs deeper.
"I thought I was bad at guessing games," Angel tells her. She has chosen to close the distance, so he takes a step closer, challenging her, showing the control that he has once again over the scent of blood. "Maybe you could give me a clue, something more than 'you always have it wrong'. Of course, I don't think I always do." He pulls his shoulders up for a casual shrug. "Sometimes, of course, but not always. Then again, it isn't about me being wrong, is it? It's about you having the answers, of being right. And really, your age isn't showing."
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That, and she is a complete bitch.
She keeps her arms crossed, elbows drawn close to her body, her leg jutted out so that it meets the ground at an angle. Though she might look beat to hell, Ruby has a fascinating way of keeping all her bones upright, and though the look of disgust has faded from her face somewhat, she still does not, by any stretch of the word, look pleased. It would be easy to brush him off and literally disappear from under his nose, and it would be easy to insult him, but if there's one quality that is amplified by being a demon, it's curiosity. There are things Ruby doesn't understand - her begrudging relationship with Dean, why Sam cares whether she lives or dies - and the more time she spends among people, the more time she wants to why.
So she asks: "Why do you care?" Her voice tilts up at the end, prickly and defensive, and she stands like she's holding a great prize hidden underneath her jacket, something to keep safe and hide away from all the eyes out there.
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His current conclusion is close to the mark: she's defensive. She's slipped up, and if he had played his cards correctly, maybe he could have pulled more from this. But Angel doubts this. Had he changed his remark, she would still be aiming for control, aiming because she is defensive. Ruby has to attack first, smug and proud, until those attacks are impossible, and then the wall slowly climbs around her.
And that, too, is familiar.
"Well, I'd say it's because you made it clear that there's more than just that. That's why I care. I'm curious, and we interact frequently enough for that to be natural. But what's more interesting is this." Angel steps closer to her, closer still, until there's only a little bit of distance between them. He hopes she doesn't needlessly lash out. She got the last hit in, after all-and given how things go, isn't that enough for her? "That I even need to tell you, and that you aren't answering it yourself. Why is that?"
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