deal with this s3 icon. :| she's ... obviously not suddenly blonde /whatevs.thatdemonbitchApril 11 2011, 07:14:00 UTC
There was a flicker of concern in her when she realized this wasn't going to be about torture. She could feel pain again, was locked to this vessel, and they still weren't calling that good? Fan-freaking-tastic. That meant worse news forever this was going, and that creativity of hers was going into overdrive thinking of the options. If they could pin her to the vessel, there was no reason they couldn't rip her out and torture her the good old-fashioned, Hellfire way.
She tried to spit in his face at that final question, on sheer instinct. All right, sure, there was no hope of her actually being able to spit that far, but the principle was the important thing and she had that in spades. Whether he meant it to or not -- and she suspected he meant it to -- the question itself was something of a knife to the gut.
"Go to Hell," she directed. It was none of his business what she could and couldn't feel. Remembering what it was like to be human was different than still feeling it. She wasn't lucky enough to get all the feelings. Just shadows. Just barely there but not really enough. It was part of what made being around Sam as caustic as it was for her. It pulled her closer to it which, as good as it felt, was dangerous to what she needed to use him for.
The last thing she needed was this supposed doctor shoving that fact in her face.
uhhh no she totally just changed bodies in the middle of this. (nottalking)damned_doctorsApril 11 2011, 17:46:15 UTC
While she wasn't yelling, the fact that she'd made a sad attempt to spit at him (the distance was too far, even if he had drawn closer) and had told him to take a trip to her home made it clear that he'd already hit a nerve.
That hadn't been so hard.
"Actually, I'd be curious to hear about it. I've been told that I'll be going there a number of times, but I'm not exactly up on the details. Just what is Hell like?" He realized that she wasn't likely to tell him a thing, but keeping his cool and subtly taunting her was a good way to work even further under her skin. Which wasn't a part of the process, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable.
He was going to have to get to work soon, but a bit of setup was always preferable to just getting down to business.
totally. i just forgot to write that power in my application i hope you don't mind lolololthatdemonbitchApril 12 2011, 21:08:17 UTC
It was a little frustrating, to know that he was trying to bait her and simultaneously be unable to keep herself from rising to it. But hey, not like she could help it. The guy had a way of getting under her skin, and not in the Alastair way either. It was more like an unshakable urge to throttle him thanks to that reliably short fuse on her temper.
"Wouldn't be too excited for stories, if I were you. Because as soon as I'm out of here? I'll make sure that you get a one-way ticket to see firsthand." She jerked at the binding on her wrists again, trying to sit up a little and failing as she sneered at him, hatred seething in her tone. It wasn't the same kind of panicked, urgent attempt at escape that was expected, though. It was more like a furious urge to break him in half that instigated her actions. For Ruby, the two had a nasty habit of crossing wires.
But the reality of it was that there was no amount of rage or attempted use of her supernatural talents that was going to get her off that operating table, and there was a fear creeping into her as that sank in -- a fear that was usually reserved for the likes of higher beings. This was just the foreplay. She wasn't in control here, and she was running low on hopes of changing that.
The doctor found it odd that Ruby was bothering to promise him a place in Hell when he had just mentioned how he'd heard that threat a number of times before. Honestly, when it came that many times and nothing ever happened, it lost a lot of its weight. He wasn't dismissing the fact that Hell existed by any means -- Ruby here was proof that it did -- but he didn't believe any of the people who ended up under his knife were actually powerful enough to send him there.
There was something interesting about this whole experience, though. While Ruby was still behaving like a caged animal, she was more similar in temperament to a bear or a lion rather than a rabbit or a dog. It made perfect sense to him, since most patients acted on fear whereas she acted on anger. More than that, the hatred that came off of her was backed up with a certain sense of her own belief in her power.
If she actually had all of her abilities here, he knew full well that she could flay the skin from his bones.
And the human reaction he had to it was interesting; his heart was pumping and his forehead was wet with sweat. Not that she could see any of that, but nonetheless...
That was all it was: a reaction. It wasn't going to stop him from doing his job, and so with a shake of his head, he moved over to a side counter to grab his instruments. The first thing he needed to do was open her chest up, and so he grabbed for the electric saw and moved back over to the table with it.
"Unfortunately, to get to the real interesting part I'm going to have to put you through physical pain first. I know it's old news for you, but just bear with me, if you would." And with that, he turned it on.
At first, she wasn't sure what the tool he'd picked up was. Not like she had the world's greatest vantage point, lying there all useless on the table. But when he kicked it into high gear, the buzzing was heads up enough. It was impossible to push back her first instinctual urge to tug harder at the bonds -- she could feel her wrists rubbing raw from the attempts, but that pain was nothing compared to what she could see coming.
It was because of her experience with this kind of torture that she was able to reason herself out of the useless struggle and bite back the fearful scream that was ready to jump out of her throat. If she kept wriggling like she was, it was gonna be worse. It wouldn't just be one quick cut, it'd be tearing up her chest and dragging it out until he could get one deep enough.
Her willpower was strong enough to force the waves of panic that she had unfortunately let slip past back behind a look of pure loathing, holding her chin high and tensing her body to keep herself from budging like she wanted to. There was no escaping this. She just needed to tough it out and try and focus on milking answers out of this guy instead of letting him get under her skin -- literally and figuratively.
"Nice toy. Back in my day, we did things the old fashioned way. Knives, scalpels. But you're too young to remember what that's like." She sucked in a breath, trying to somehow make her back press further into the table and make her chest, diaphragm and stomach more concave.
"You'd think there'd be a little creativity. Come on, Landel pays you assholes for this, doesn't he? If I were you, I'd ask him for better benefits. Dental, maybe." It was pretty rushed, but the snideness was all crammed into the right places. She needed to bait him into telling her something, so she could at least walk away from this with more than she'd known. Like whether they were answering to Landel or Aguilar these days, and if they even knew where the good doctor was.
There was the panic. It seemed that even a demon, one who was admittedly far older than him -- as she'd just pointed out -- couldn't remain completely unfazed in the face of a saw that could tear her current vessel into pieces if he so pleased. Luckily for her, he didn't, but he was going to have to open her up a bit, just to get to the important parts.
"Oh, well, knives and scalpels are all well and good, but they won't do much against bone." Not in his experience, at least. Trying to saw through bone with a knife would actually probably be even worse torture when it came down to it, so Ruby really should have been thanking him. But that was something she could likely deduce for herself.
She was tossing out words to try and distract him, but he'd been through enough idle chitchat already. "Believe me, the benefits are superb as is," was all he said in response. And while she was trying to press her body into the exam table as if she could somehow sink into it and get away from all this, that wasn't going to happen -- nor was he going to take any pity on her. And with the insults she was tossing out, she wasn't really doing herself any favors either.
Not that flattery would have changed his mind, had she resorted to that. In a way, perhaps it was best that she was holding on to some sort of integrity.
He was thinking too much again, though, and so without further ado he bent over her and positioned the saw above her sternum. Slowly, he lowered it to cut through skin and then bone.
It hurt worse than she remembered. Hell, she'd come off fresh from another trip downstairs for a reminder on why she needed to get her job done right six months ago and it still hurt worse than she remembered. Maybe it was the saw, hey, maybe it was just dull from overuse. They had to get pretty good mileage out of the thing in a place like this.
The pain split through her, and at first she was able to clench down on her jaw. The way the blade whirred into her sternum, she was pretty sure she could feel every rotation of the blade shaving off more of the bone and cutting deeper, blood spreading warm across her chest. But her pride didn't last. It was maybe twenty seconds of excruciating agony before she gave in and her head pressed down against the table, chin tilting up some as she cried out in loud, desperate shrieks of pain.
No. The truth of the matter was that it never got easier, and with her demon pain tolerance cut down to a minimum in her vessel for some weird reason in here, she couldn't even pretend she had a leg up on this. The only way it could be worse if he used fucking holy water to 'sterilize.' She might as well be dead in the for-good sense of the word, impaled on her own knife -- again, apparently -- instead of suffering through that.
Her eyes shot wide at first, the intensity catching her off guard, and the whites quickly disappeared, her pupil dilating and pushing an inky blackness that made the entirety of both her eyes look like shining black pits, hollowed out. And then slowly, her eyes squinted instead of widening as she tried to fight back further tormented noises like the choked shrieks that were still in the back of her throat.
The fact that she was able to hold out for even that long without making a sound was rather impressive, though that wasn't something the doctor would admit to out loud. It also would have been a pointless gesture, seeing how the buzz of the drill and Ruby's screams would make it impossible for his words to get through. That was fine, though. For the moment, they were past the point of words.
With the light all centered on her, he was able to take in every sight, from the blood that was soaking through her ruined clothing to the shade that her eyes turned as the screaming intensified -- and then eventually died down. That was only because she was putting all of her effort into stopping herself, but that was fine.
Once she had been opened up far enough, the drill was finally turned off. Some of her blood had splattered onto him due to his less than conventional methods, but he didn't mind. As far as he knew, demon blood was only dangerous if ingested, and probably not from a demon of Ruby's level.
Sighing, he set the drill to the side and then moved forward to eye her exposed heart. "Normally you'd be put under for this, but we generally pick patients who can handle staying awake for it." And it was just so much more engaging that way. "Any guesses on what comes next?"
The splatter of the blood died down when he pulled the drill back, and Ruby's jaw slowly shuddered closed, but only for a brief moment. Her lips were chapping a little, not that it was exactly what she was focusing on. The demon was a little distracted by the way the blood was slowly running down her clavicle into the hollow of her throat where it formed a tiny warm pool.
A choking noise churned in the back of her throat, almost like a gurgled noise because she couldn't quite make out a full word. Her chest heaved, heart pulsing at the speed that'd be more acceptable out of a rabbit that was in the process of frightening itself to death. Slowly, she heaved a few labored breaths, lips parting with every gasp and eyes staring distantly back at the dark ceiling that she couldn't really make out.
In her first few decades in Hell, she'd tried to will herself away to some safer corner of her mind. Now, that corner didn't exist and she just had to hollow herself out. The breaths worked her up to being able to speak again, though, and though it wasn't evident in her eyes themselves because the darkness wasn't going anywhere, the twitch of her eyelids made it clear that she shifted her gaze towards him.
"Go screw yourself," she breathed, voice shaky. A thin sheen of sweat had worked its way onto her skin.
That wasn't a very interesting response. The doctor sighed and shook his head, realizing that he couldn't expect too much for someone who had just had their chest sawed open while awake. Then again, he'd been hoping for a bit more pizazz from a demon, but that had clearly been a mistake.
If she wasn't going to play along with him, then he'd just have to keep going. After all, she was almost human -- physically, at least -- right now. That meant that she was bound to pass out from the blood loss eventually. It was probably for the best that she couldn't see her insides all that well with the way she was strapped down, since that sight alone could lead to fainting.
For him, however, it didn't even make him weak in the knees.
"Let's move along, then," he murmured to himself as he went to collect the next ingredient needed for this process. It was in his bag, and it was only after he dug it out that its radiance was revealed, lighting up the portion of the room that he was in. The unbelievably bright light came from the contents of the syringe that he was now holding; clearly it was a substance not known to most men.
Ruby should know it, though, and so the doctor walked back toward her, holding it in front of him to show it off. "Recognize this?" If she was clever, she'd see where this was going.
It was hard to stay focused on any one thing that wasn't the slow trickling loss of blood or the pain radiating from her chest cavity. So, when she realized he was trying to get her attention, it took a minute for her to drag her line of sight over that way. The glow was pretty evident beyond the range of the overhead lamp, and she didn't quite manage to place it right away. After all, she'd never seen the stuff in person.
"Yeah, yeah, I saw Harry Potter. What," she had to pause to swallow back a heaved, labored breath, "you got a unicorn out back?" It didn't matter whether or not they were real right now, what mattered was she was beginning to seriously hope that it was unicorn blood in his hands somehow and not what her mind was beginning to consider.
There weren't a lot of things that glowed like that in this universe -- well, her universe, really. But she was beginning to bank on the (admittedly flawed and pointless) hope that it was from someplace else. It wasn't like Landel couldn't pull something to that degree off. He was all about digging his grubby little fingers where they didn't belong.
But, when she really gave it a good look, every part of her knew. There was no two ways about it. Demons had a kind of sixth sense about these things and what was in the good doctor's hands was 100% angelic. Bestowed with the Grace of God and Heaven and all that good stuff that Ruby wanted nothing to do with. Hell, she'd bailed on Sam when it had come up, the last thing she wanted was for that crap to be in the hands of Doctor Moreau.
Unfortunately, she wasn't really in any position to be hiding her recognition. And with the pain lessened from when he was actively slicing her open, there was only one reason that her eyes weren't going back to normal. There was some real fear there in the way her mouth twitched and her eyes narrowed. She tried to push it back down as the cold feeling came over her, but … well. There was only so much she could do for what was a totally justified reaction. Castiel may not have had any juice in him, but by the looks of it, what this guy had was exactly the opposite. No angel, just juice.
Maybe if she were anyone else, she'd be begging for respite and trying to barter right about now. Maybe she would have honestly believed that there was something he wanted from her that she could bargain her way out of this position with. But, not Ruby. She wasn't exactly a stranger to the concept of agony and torture for the sake of it. So, she just choked down a vulnerable noise and tilted her chin up some, staring at the ceiling and forcing herself not to watch. Like that would somehow make it easier.
Of all the things to mention, Harry Potter? The doctor couldn't say he was read up on that particular subject, but he got the feeling that they didn't make much use of syringes in that particular altverse. The fact that a demon knew much of anything about that was interesting, but it seemed that even Ruby had the time to read books. From what he understood, that one boy's particular journey had managed to gain popularity as fiction in many other worlds.
He'd been here once, in fact, but the doctor had never had the pleasure of meeting him.
That was all besides the point, however. It seemed clear that Ruby, despite all of her deflecting, was starting to realize just what it was that he had in hand. It was actually rather remarkable; just holding it like this, he could feel the power radiating off of it. Like he was tampering with something far beyond him.
But as a scientist, he didn't believe there was such a thing. Anything could be tamed and then used, even an angel's power. Though getting a hold of this Grace had hardly been easy.
"We went through a lot of trouble to obtain this," he said out loud as he took his spot next to the exam table once more. He observed Ruby's blood soaking around her body and then onto the metal itself, but it was a sight he'd seen enough times that he could watch it with a detached interest.
"Angels don't fall as often as you'd think, and their Grace hides when they do. But for the sake of harnessing you, we made sure to get our hands on some." He slowly raised the syringe and then extended it closer to her, allowing her to look right at it. Would it burn her black eyes? Would she shy away?
Well, it was going to be injected into her soon enough, but he wanted to observe her initial response first.
Hearing the confirmation from him didn't help her case in the slightest. She bit down on her lip to keep from letting a worried noise escape her, tried to tense her jaw and keep herself even and calm -- but there was really no chance of that. Not with him shoving the stuff in her face like she oughtta take a whiff. The smell alone … She turned her face away, a pained look visible in the curvature of her lips and the wrinkling of her brow.
After a minute, she even clenched her eyes shut, shying away from it as much as she possibly could while still within the confines of her restraints. granted, it wasn't really far at all, and it wasn't making her feel any better like she thought it would, but it was better than the alternative of staring at that syringe head-on. Just the realization that it was there had her gut twisting with discomfort and anxiety.
This time, there was no witty retort. She wasn't going to risk one -- not now. There just wasn't room for it when she was stuck between a hard place and the end of an angelic needle. Now that was one she'd have a hard time getting Sam to buy.
Well, she did end up shying away, although this time there was no biting comment to go with it. In fact, while she seemed to be trying to distance herself from what was going on, she also appeared to have accepted what was going to happen to her. She knew that there was no way out, so now she was just trying to divest herself from the situation and put her mind in another place.
That was fine by him. Soon enough, she wasn't going to be able to ignore it no matter what she did. Whatever reaction it caused, putting an angel's power straight into the heart of a demon (so to speak) was going to result in something.
And now that curiosity would be sated. As a smile curved across his lips, he leaned forward and jammed the needle right into that beating muscle, pushing down the tab on the syringe to empty out the Grace right into her.
The worst part was probably that she couldn't feel it until it was too late. Still, she had the swing of his arm to make her think that she could feel the needle penetrating her heart, simply because she knew what was coming, and a gasp came out of her that was whiny and vulnerable and all the things that Ruby was not. But, that instinctive, psychosomatic twinge of pain was nothing compared to what she actually felt when he'd pushed the syringe.
It was like her whole body was screaming in agony, starting in her chest and slowly spreading out through it. Like there was fire inside of her veins, and not in that pleasant, sexual kind of way. Immediately she started to squirm as best she could beneath the bonds, breathy, frightened noises coming out of her as she struggled to look down at herself as though she could somehow see it creeping through her -- not that she could even get a good vantage point from the way she was strung up.
She bucked every joint of her body that she could manage, bending her knees, lifting her hips, wriggling and suddenly ignoring the way that the blood that had drained out of her was slicking the exam table and staining her clothes (as if they weren't already ruined before this) as she more or less rolled around in it, trying to break free.
The burn was maddening. She wanted to jerk her hands free and claw it out of her, tear out her own arteries and just do without because it was better than suffering through this. Anything was. At this point, running herself through on her own knife wasn't being ruled out, because it more than just hurt.
It wasn't just the feeling of being engulfed in a sea of flames that were licking at what was left of her very soul that was driving her to the edge. It was the inherent wrongness. She'd been suffering since she got there with the feeling that she wasn't as she should be -- trapped in a body that wasn't hers instead of snugly borrowing it, a square peg trying to mash into a round hole. And now there was something holy inside of a being that was quite the opposite and it felt like it was burning what was left of her away.
There was no pain on Earth, no pain in Hell, even, that could match the way her limbs were screaming for reprieve. And by the time it had pumped through her whole body, she began to scream, tears edging at the corners of her blackened eyes as she arched her back off the table, still trying to tear herself free like she was some kind of chained, wild animal. For the most part, coherent sounds were beyond her, and it just batted back and forth between useless whimpers or screams, but she tried to blurt out a syllable every once in a while, eventually making it to shout 'get it out of me!' or some fragment thereof.
And this was the part that he really enjoyed, because even though Ruby had believed that she'd been through the worst of it, he'd come out with something she couldn't have imagined. He'd pushed past whatever Hell had cooked up for her and dished out something entirely new. And he was able to watch, with narrowed eyes, as she was tortured from the inside out. Just that syringe full of Grace, a holy power exactly the opposite of what she was, could cause this sort of agony. It was fascinating.
And he could catalog in his mind the way she slowly broke down. How she writhed around, trying to force it out of her, trying to jump out of her own skin, but she couldn't -- she couldn't because it really was her skin now. She was trapped in that body and there was no way out even as the Grace tore through everything that made her what she was.
Which was why he hoped that this would actually work. If you mixed angel and demon, it made sense for the result to be a human, but there was also the possibility that it would just overwhelm her so intensely that she didn't survive it. He'd been willing to take that risk, but...
It would be far more interesting if she made it through.
When words were actually formed by the girl, the doctor sighed and shook his head. "That's hardly possible now. It's already in you. You'll just have to wait for it to run its course." And they would see what was left of her once that was over. He doubted that his words would even register considering what she was going through, but...
He could wait as long as it took for her to calm down and for the results to become clear.
She tried to spit in his face at that final question, on sheer instinct. All right, sure, there was no hope of her actually being able to spit that far, but the principle was the important thing and she had that in spades. Whether he meant it to or not -- and she suspected he meant it to -- the question itself was something of a knife to the gut.
"Go to Hell," she directed. It was none of his business what she could and couldn't feel. Remembering what it was like to be human was different than still feeling it. She wasn't lucky enough to get all the feelings. Just shadows. Just barely there but not really enough. It was part of what made being around Sam as caustic as it was for her. It pulled her closer to it which, as good as it felt, was dangerous to what she needed to use him for.
The last thing she needed was this supposed doctor shoving that fact in her face.
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That hadn't been so hard.
"Actually, I'd be curious to hear about it. I've been told that I'll be going there a number of times, but I'm not exactly up on the details. Just what is Hell like?" He realized that she wasn't likely to tell him a thing, but keeping his cool and subtly taunting her was a good way to work even further under her skin. Which wasn't a part of the process, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable.
He was going to have to get to work soon, but a bit of setup was always preferable to just getting down to business.
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"Wouldn't be too excited for stories, if I were you. Because as soon as I'm out of here? I'll make sure that you get a one-way ticket to see firsthand." She jerked at the binding on her wrists again, trying to sit up a little and failing as she sneered at him, hatred seething in her tone. It wasn't the same kind of panicked, urgent attempt at escape that was expected, though. It was more like a furious urge to break him in half that instigated her actions. For Ruby, the two had a nasty habit of crossing wires.
But the reality of it was that there was no amount of rage or attempted use of her supernatural talents that was going to get her off that operating table, and there was a fear creeping into her as that sank in -- a fear that was usually reserved for the likes of higher beings. This was just the foreplay. She wasn't in control here, and she was running low on hopes of changing that.
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There was something interesting about this whole experience, though. While Ruby was still behaving like a caged animal, she was more similar in temperament to a bear or a lion rather than a rabbit or a dog. It made perfect sense to him, since most patients acted on fear whereas she acted on anger. More than that, the hatred that came off of her was backed up with a certain sense of her own belief in her power.
If she actually had all of her abilities here, he knew full well that she could flay the skin from his bones.
And the human reaction he had to it was interesting; his heart was pumping and his forehead was wet with sweat. Not that she could see any of that, but nonetheless...
That was all it was: a reaction. It wasn't going to stop him from doing his job, and so with a shake of his head, he moved over to a side counter to grab his instruments. The first thing he needed to do was open her chest up, and so he grabbed for the electric saw and moved back over to the table with it.
"Unfortunately, to get to the real interesting part I'm going to have to put you through physical pain first. I know it's old news for you, but just bear with me, if you would." And with that, he turned it on.
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It was because of her experience with this kind of torture that she was able to reason herself out of the useless struggle and bite back the fearful scream that was ready to jump out of her throat. If she kept wriggling like she was, it was gonna be worse. It wouldn't just be one quick cut, it'd be tearing up her chest and dragging it out until he could get one deep enough.
Her willpower was strong enough to force the waves of panic that she had unfortunately let slip past back behind a look of pure loathing, holding her chin high and tensing her body to keep herself from budging like she wanted to. There was no escaping this. She just needed to tough it out and try and focus on milking answers out of this guy instead of letting him get under her skin -- literally and figuratively.
"Nice toy. Back in my day, we did things the old fashioned way. Knives, scalpels. But you're too young to remember what that's like." She sucked in a breath, trying to somehow make her back press further into the table and make her chest, diaphragm and stomach more concave.
"You'd think there'd be a little creativity. Come on, Landel pays you assholes for this, doesn't he? If I were you, I'd ask him for better benefits. Dental, maybe." It was pretty rushed, but the snideness was all crammed into the right places. She needed to bait him into telling her something, so she could at least walk away from this with more than she'd known. Like whether they were answering to Landel or Aguilar these days, and if they even knew where the good doctor was.
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"Oh, well, knives and scalpels are all well and good, but they won't do much against bone." Not in his experience, at least. Trying to saw through bone with a knife would actually probably be even worse torture when it came down to it, so Ruby really should have been thanking him. But that was something she could likely deduce for herself.
She was tossing out words to try and distract him, but he'd been through enough idle chitchat already. "Believe me, the benefits are superb as is," was all he said in response. And while she was trying to press her body into the exam table as if she could somehow sink into it and get away from all this, that wasn't going to happen -- nor was he going to take any pity on her. And with the insults she was tossing out, she wasn't really doing herself any favors either.
Not that flattery would have changed his mind, had she resorted to that. In a way, perhaps it was best that she was holding on to some sort of integrity.
He was thinking too much again, though, and so without further ado he bent over her and positioned the saw above her sternum. Slowly, he lowered it to cut through skin and then bone.
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The pain split through her, and at first she was able to clench down on her jaw. The way the blade whirred into her sternum, she was pretty sure she could feel every rotation of the blade shaving off more of the bone and cutting deeper, blood spreading warm across her chest. But her pride didn't last. It was maybe twenty seconds of excruciating agony before she gave in and her head pressed down against the table, chin tilting up some as she cried out in loud, desperate shrieks of pain.
No. The truth of the matter was that it never got easier, and with her demon pain tolerance cut down to a minimum in her vessel for some weird reason in here, she couldn't even pretend she had a leg up on this. The only way it could be worse if he used fucking holy water to 'sterilize.' She might as well be dead in the for-good sense of the word, impaled on her own knife -- again, apparently -- instead of suffering through that.
Her eyes shot wide at first, the intensity catching her off guard, and the whites quickly disappeared, her pupil dilating and pushing an inky blackness that made the entirety of both her eyes look like shining black pits, hollowed out. And then slowly, her eyes squinted instead of widening as she tried to fight back further tormented noises like the choked shrieks that were still in the back of her throat.
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With the light all centered on her, he was able to take in every sight, from the blood that was soaking through her ruined clothing to the shade that her eyes turned as the screaming intensified -- and then eventually died down. That was only because she was putting all of her effort into stopping herself, but that was fine.
Once she had been opened up far enough, the drill was finally turned off. Some of her blood had splattered onto him due to his less than conventional methods, but he didn't mind. As far as he knew, demon blood was only dangerous if ingested, and probably not from a demon of Ruby's level.
Sighing, he set the drill to the side and then moved forward to eye her exposed heart. "Normally you'd be put under for this, but we generally pick patients who can handle staying awake for it." And it was just so much more engaging that way. "Any guesses on what comes next?"
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A choking noise churned in the back of her throat, almost like a gurgled noise because she couldn't quite make out a full word. Her chest heaved, heart pulsing at the speed that'd be more acceptable out of a rabbit that was in the process of frightening itself to death. Slowly, she heaved a few labored breaths, lips parting with every gasp and eyes staring distantly back at the dark ceiling that she couldn't really make out.
In her first few decades in Hell, she'd tried to will herself away to some safer corner of her mind. Now, that corner didn't exist and she just had to hollow herself out. The breaths worked her up to being able to speak again, though, and though it wasn't evident in her eyes themselves because the darkness wasn't going anywhere, the twitch of her eyelids made it clear that she shifted her gaze towards him.
"Go screw yourself," she breathed, voice shaky. A thin sheen of sweat had worked its way onto her skin.
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If she wasn't going to play along with him, then he'd just have to keep going. After all, she was almost human -- physically, at least -- right now. That meant that she was bound to pass out from the blood loss eventually. It was probably for the best that she couldn't see her insides all that well with the way she was strapped down, since that sight alone could lead to fainting.
For him, however, it didn't even make him weak in the knees.
"Let's move along, then," he murmured to himself as he went to collect the next ingredient needed for this process. It was in his bag, and it was only after he dug it out that its radiance was revealed, lighting up the portion of the room that he was in. The unbelievably bright light came from the contents of the syringe that he was now holding; clearly it was a substance not known to most men.
Ruby should know it, though, and so the doctor walked back toward her, holding it in front of him to show it off. "Recognize this?" If she was clever, she'd see where this was going.
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"Yeah, yeah, I saw Harry Potter. What," she had to pause to swallow back a heaved, labored breath, "you got a unicorn out back?" It didn't matter whether or not they were real right now, what mattered was she was beginning to seriously hope that it was unicorn blood in his hands somehow and not what her mind was beginning to consider.
There weren't a lot of things that glowed like that in this universe -- well, her universe, really. But she was beginning to bank on the (admittedly flawed and pointless) hope that it was from someplace else. It wasn't like Landel couldn't pull something to that degree off. He was all about digging his grubby little fingers where they didn't belong.
But, when she really gave it a good look, every part of her knew. There was no two ways about it. Demons had a kind of sixth sense about these things and what was in the good doctor's hands was 100% angelic. Bestowed with the Grace of God and Heaven and all that good stuff that Ruby wanted nothing to do with. Hell, she'd bailed on Sam when it had come up, the last thing she wanted was for that crap to be in the hands of Doctor Moreau.
Unfortunately, she wasn't really in any position to be hiding her recognition. And with the pain lessened from when he was actively slicing her open, there was only one reason that her eyes weren't going back to normal. There was some real fear there in the way her mouth twitched and her eyes narrowed. She tried to push it back down as the cold feeling came over her, but … well. There was only so much she could do for what was a totally justified reaction. Castiel may not have had any juice in him, but by the looks of it, what this guy had was exactly the opposite. No angel, just juice.
Maybe if she were anyone else, she'd be begging for respite and trying to barter right about now. Maybe she would have honestly believed that there was something he wanted from her that she could bargain her way out of this position with. But, not Ruby. She wasn't exactly a stranger to the concept of agony and torture for the sake of it. So, she just choked down a vulnerable noise and tilted her chin up some, staring at the ceiling and forcing herself not to watch. Like that would somehow make it easier.
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He'd been here once, in fact, but the doctor had never had the pleasure of meeting him.
That was all besides the point, however. It seemed clear that Ruby, despite all of her deflecting, was starting to realize just what it was that he had in hand. It was actually rather remarkable; just holding it like this, he could feel the power radiating off of it. Like he was tampering with something far beyond him.
But as a scientist, he didn't believe there was such a thing. Anything could be tamed and then used, even an angel's power. Though getting a hold of this Grace had hardly been easy.
"We went through a lot of trouble to obtain this," he said out loud as he took his spot next to the exam table once more. He observed Ruby's blood soaking around her body and then onto the metal itself, but it was a sight he'd seen enough times that he could watch it with a detached interest.
"Angels don't fall as often as you'd think, and their Grace hides when they do. But for the sake of harnessing you, we made sure to get our hands on some." He slowly raised the syringe and then extended it closer to her, allowing her to look right at it. Would it burn her black eyes? Would she shy away?
Well, it was going to be injected into her soon enough, but he wanted to observe her initial response first.
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After a minute, she even clenched her eyes shut, shying away from it as much as she possibly could while still within the confines of her restraints. granted, it wasn't really far at all, and it wasn't making her feel any better like she thought it would, but it was better than the alternative of staring at that syringe head-on. Just the realization that it was there had her gut twisting with discomfort and anxiety.
This time, there was no witty retort. She wasn't going to risk one -- not now. There just wasn't room for it when she was stuck between a hard place and the end of an angelic needle. Now that was one she'd have a hard time getting Sam to buy.
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That was fine by him. Soon enough, she wasn't going to be able to ignore it no matter what she did. Whatever reaction it caused, putting an angel's power straight into the heart of a demon (so to speak) was going to result in something.
And now that curiosity would be sated. As a smile curved across his lips, he leaned forward and jammed the needle right into that beating muscle, pushing down the tab on the syringe to empty out the Grace right into her.
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It was like her whole body was screaming in agony, starting in her chest and slowly spreading out through it. Like there was fire inside of her veins, and not in that pleasant, sexual kind of way. Immediately she started to squirm as best she could beneath the bonds, breathy, frightened noises coming out of her as she struggled to look down at herself as though she could somehow see it creeping through her -- not that she could even get a good vantage point from the way she was strung up.
She bucked every joint of her body that she could manage, bending her knees, lifting her hips, wriggling and suddenly ignoring the way that the blood that had drained out of her was slicking the exam table and staining her clothes (as if they weren't already ruined before this) as she more or less rolled around in it, trying to break free.
The burn was maddening. She wanted to jerk her hands free and claw it out of her, tear out her own arteries and just do without because it was better than suffering through this. Anything was. At this point, running herself through on her own knife wasn't being ruled out, because it more than just hurt.
It wasn't just the feeling of being engulfed in a sea of flames that were licking at what was left of her very soul that was driving her to the edge. It was the inherent wrongness. She'd been suffering since she got there with the feeling that she wasn't as she should be -- trapped in a body that wasn't hers instead of snugly borrowing it, a square peg trying to mash into a round hole. And now there was something holy inside of a being that was quite the opposite and it felt like it was burning what was left of her away.
There was no pain on Earth, no pain in Hell, even, that could match the way her limbs were screaming for reprieve. And by the time it had pumped through her whole body, she began to scream, tears edging at the corners of her blackened eyes as she arched her back off the table, still trying to tear herself free like she was some kind of chained, wild animal. For the most part, coherent sounds were beyond her, and it just batted back and forth between useless whimpers or screams, but she tried to blurt out a syllable every once in a while, eventually making it to shout 'get it out of me!' or some fragment thereof.
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And he could catalog in his mind the way she slowly broke down. How she writhed around, trying to force it out of her, trying to jump out of her own skin, but she couldn't -- she couldn't because it really was her skin now. She was trapped in that body and there was no way out even as the Grace tore through everything that made her what she was.
Which was why he hoped that this would actually work. If you mixed angel and demon, it made sense for the result to be a human, but there was also the possibility that it would just overwhelm her so intensely that she didn't survive it. He'd been willing to take that risk, but...
It would be far more interesting if she made it through.
When words were actually formed by the girl, the doctor sighed and shook his head. "That's hardly possible now. It's already in you. You'll just have to wait for it to run its course." And they would see what was left of her once that was over. He doubted that his words would even register considering what she was going through, but...
He could wait as long as it took for her to calm down and for the results to become clear.
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