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.
It wasn't stopping. You'd think that as the minutes wore on, dragging out like they were eternity, that the burning would fade and she would stop feeling like a human matchstick -- or, demon, really -- but no. If anything, the pain worsened and she continued to howl, bucking wildly and trying to free herself from the vessel or at least get to a position where she could curl up into the fetal position, writhing pathetically. That sounded passable.
But it wasn't happening. Sure, it sounded great, but she was still just waging a useless battle against her own body. Her body. Not coma girl -- if it were just a vessel, it wouldn't be hurting this badly. It wouldn't have her shrieking and crying. It was worse than the shallow cuts of a knife. Worse than the pains in the fractured reality that Hell was, that allowed for worse pains than anyone thought imaginable on Earth. No, apparently, they just didn't have the right tools down there.
Orange light crackled under her skin the same as it did in the demons who were cut by her knife. The kind of threatening, inside-out burning that could kill a demon. But, she wasn't lucky enough for it to be killing her. It was just enough to chip away at what was left of her and try to fill the gaps with something that was gnawing away at her insides.
It felt like centuries -- and she knew what those felt like, so it was an apt comparison, Ruby felt -- before it began to ebb away even in the slightest. The pain was still hounding her in an immeasurable way, but it was more like something she could tolerate. The extremes that had led to quiet whimpering when she got bounced back to Hell after the failed attempt on Lilith's life instead of shrill screams.
Her eyes seemed to seize as the whites tried to fight the inky blackness back down while she tried to regain control of herself and deny the pain. Pretend it wasn't as bad as it really was. Quiet whimpers that she wasn't entirely conscious of continued to creep out as she slowed her squirming, tears still leaking out the corners of her eyes. Shallow gasps were the best she could manage, body drenched with a sheen of sweat, expression shaken and hollow.
As fascinating as it was to watch, the doctor grew more and more concerned as more time passed with no change. The way her body lit up was definitely interesting, and he'd heard tell of how a demon reacted to truly threatening amounts of damage, but it seemed that Ruby was holding on despite it all. That was good. If he had to report a failure to the general, there was no way of knowing how he would respond. Landel had been one thing, but...
Eventually, the screaming did start to die down, which was good both for his ears and for this experiment. He could only determine whether or not there had been a permanent change in her when she was actually coherent enough to talk and to feel. She wasn't quite there yet, but he was going to need to get prepared for the next part of the procedure.
The hard part, luckily for Ruby, was over. All he had to do now was close her back up and then observe the results. She'd have to be monitored over the next few days, of course, but that was something that would be done subtly.
So while she continued to attempt to gain control over herself, the doctor moved to the side of the room to gather the supplies he would need to first staple her chest back together and then to stitch up the split skin. Once that happened, it would be as if nothing had been done at all. Except he knew that chances were she would never be able to convince herself of that. The scar would remain there on her chest, but if this went how they'd hoped, then she would feel more emotional effects as well.
Her breathing didn't seem to be evening out any time soon, and it was still shuddered and shallow and labored. The pain was so distracting that she didn't even notice him moving away, instead focused on trying to shift her way into something more comfortable that wasn't going to happen. She couldn't just twist her hips in a different way and get the Grace out of her. It wasn't going to stop burning its way through her.
Worse, there seemed to be some messier side effects. Tears were freely streaming down her face instead of welling up in her eyes and being bitten back. Her cheeks had reddened from the salt in them staining her skin, and there was still a crackling of light beneath her skin, but it seemed like a more constant and duller spread of lightning. Like it was being seen through a cloud cover.
The shrieks of pain had died down, but now there was a choked noise that she didn't really recognize coming from her throat, accompanied by light shaking in her shoulders. Mouth and throat raw from dryness and screaming, her voice sounded raspier when she spoke up this time in shaking and nearly whimpered tones.
"What …" She had to pause to cringe, clenching her deal and humming through the pain that scorched that licked her very soul, "did you do?" She should be dead. It didn't make sense. Angels were the antithesis of everything that demons were.
The burn was the worst in her torso, which was a blessing and a curse. It drew her attention away from the gaping wound that remained there, but it also meant she couldn't just try to shake it out like she could the tingling in her extremities. It felt like he'd poured acid into her chest cavity and just walked away to have tea until he could observe and document the results.
Even dulled, the pain was blinding, and her ability to focus on anything but her whimpered response was severely hindered. When she forced her eyes back open again she was sure the overhead light was contributing to that burny sensation, simply because it felt like it, like the Grace, had pervaded all of her in an intense, agonizing way. But it was then that she realized he was across the room -- or at least, in the darkness outside of her field of vision. She realized faintly that there was no way of knowing just how large the room even was, or if he was even the only one there. Not from her position.
With everything he needed to put her back together again gathered, the doctor wheeled over a metal instrument table so that he would have it all on-hand. The question that was tossed back at him seemed unnecessary, since he'd made it fairly clear what he was doing. She knew that was Grace that had been put into her, so what was confusing about all of this?
Not seeing much reason to answer a question that was already obvious (why would she waste her breath on that?), he only shook his head at her. "You know full well. Now just calm down, this will be over soon enough."
Except it wouldn't. The pain would stay with her all night in lessened amounts, if it didn't carry on into the day as well. And it would do more than that, if his calculations were right. "Aren't you curious to know what happens when demonic power is counterbalanced by the divine?" Would they cancel each other out or would it turn her into something even more peculiar?
None of that would matter if he let her die on him, though, and so he grabbed the staple gun first, using his gloved hands to get her breastbone back into place. Once the adhesive was applied, he bent over and started to bolt the sternum back together. It was odd how crude surgery really was in the end, but it got the job done and Ruby was hardly in the position to complain.
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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But it wasn't happening. Sure, it sounded great, but she was still just waging a useless battle against her own body. Her body. Not coma girl -- if it were just a vessel, it wouldn't be hurting this badly. It wouldn't have her shrieking and crying. It was worse than the shallow cuts of a knife. Worse than the pains in the fractured reality that Hell was, that allowed for worse pains than anyone thought imaginable on Earth. No, apparently, they just didn't have the right tools down there.
Orange light crackled under her skin the same as it did in the demons who were cut by her knife. The kind of threatening, inside-out burning that could kill a demon. But, she wasn't lucky enough for it to be killing her. It was just enough to chip away at what was left of her and try to fill the gaps with something that was gnawing away at her insides.
It felt like centuries -- and she knew what those felt like, so it was an apt comparison, Ruby felt -- before it began to ebb away even in the slightest. The pain was still hounding her in an immeasurable way, but it was more like something she could tolerate. The extremes that had led to quiet whimpering when she got bounced back to Hell after the failed attempt on Lilith's life instead of shrill screams.
Her eyes seemed to seize as the whites tried to fight the inky blackness back down while she tried to regain control of herself and deny the pain. Pretend it wasn't as bad as it really was. Quiet whimpers that she wasn't entirely conscious of continued to creep out as she slowed her squirming, tears still leaking out the corners of her eyes. Shallow gasps were the best she could manage, body drenched with a sheen of sweat, expression shaken and hollow.
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Eventually, the screaming did start to die down, which was good both for his ears and for this experiment. He could only determine whether or not there had been a permanent change in her when she was actually coherent enough to talk and to feel. She wasn't quite there yet, but he was going to need to get prepared for the next part of the procedure.
The hard part, luckily for Ruby, was over. All he had to do now was close her back up and then observe the results. She'd have to be monitored over the next few days, of course, but that was something that would be done subtly.
So while she continued to attempt to gain control over herself, the doctor moved to the side of the room to gather the supplies he would need to first staple her chest back together and then to stitch up the split skin. Once that happened, it would be as if nothing had been done at all. Except he knew that chances were she would never be able to convince herself of that. The scar would remain there on her chest, but if this went how they'd hoped, then she would feel more emotional effects as well.
And hopefully he would find out soon enough...
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Worse, there seemed to be some messier side effects. Tears were freely streaming down her face instead of welling up in her eyes and being bitten back. Her cheeks had reddened from the salt in them staining her skin, and there was still a crackling of light beneath her skin, but it seemed like a more constant and duller spread of lightning. Like it was being seen through a cloud cover.
The shrieks of pain had died down, but now there was a choked noise that she didn't really recognize coming from her throat, accompanied by light shaking in her shoulders. Mouth and throat raw from dryness and screaming, her voice sounded raspier when she spoke up this time in shaking and nearly whimpered tones.
"What …" She had to pause to cringe, clenching her deal and humming through the pain that scorched that licked her very soul, "did you do?" She should be dead. It didn't make sense. Angels were the antithesis of everything that demons were.
The burn was the worst in her torso, which was a blessing and a curse. It drew her attention away from the gaping wound that remained there, but it also meant she couldn't just try to shake it out like she could the tingling in her extremities. It felt like he'd poured acid into her chest cavity and just walked away to have tea until he could observe and document the results.
Even dulled, the pain was blinding, and her ability to focus on anything but her whimpered response was severely hindered. When she forced her eyes back open again she was sure the overhead light was contributing to that burny sensation, simply because it felt like it, like the Grace, had pervaded all of her in an intense, agonizing way. But it was then that she realized he was across the room -- or at least, in the darkness outside of her field of vision. She realized faintly that there was no way of knowing just how large the room even was, or if he was even the only one there. Not from her position.
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Not seeing much reason to answer a question that was already obvious (why would she waste her breath on that?), he only shook his head at her. "You know full well. Now just calm down, this will be over soon enough."
Except it wouldn't. The pain would stay with her all night in lessened amounts, if it didn't carry on into the day as well. And it would do more than that, if his calculations were right. "Aren't you curious to know what happens when demonic power is counterbalanced by the divine?" Would they cancel each other out or would it turn her into something even more peculiar?
None of that would matter if he let her die on him, though, and so he grabbed the staple gun first, using his gloved hands to get her breastbone back into place. Once the adhesive was applied, he bent over and started to bolt the sternum back together. It was odd how crude surgery really was in the end, but it got the job done and Ruby was hardly in the position to complain.
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