sdatislife
in
damned
Night 48: M21-30 Hallway
Shinji was worried. He'd been waiting for a while - Kaworu still hadn't arrived. He didn't know why and as always his insecurities had begun to flare up. Maybe he'd changed his mind. Maybe he didn't really want to see Shinji. Maybe he'd simply been hallucinating the whole thing. Shinji glanced down the darkened hallway, flashlight dangling from his
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Ruby barely even bothered to knock on Sam’s door this time. She rapped her knuckles against it lightly-more out of formality than anything else-and then opened the door without waiting for an answer. Sam wasn’t expecting her, but she would never have been able to gain his trust the way she had if she showed up only when called.
Sam was sitting on his bed, and even in the dark she could tell he wasn’t his usual tall, dark, and brooding self. “Hey,” she started softly, “you look like shit.” After helping him get sober, she knew very well what hungover Sam could be like and didn’t want to make it any worse for either of them. “What the hell happened?”
She limped over to the bed, glancing up at the doorframe where she imagined the broken salt line to be, and sat down on his desk chair. She wouldn’t get any closer to him until she knew exactly what his current physical and mental states were. That dark shape in his hand looked kind of like a gun, and she had a sneaking suspicion that those could actually hurt her here.
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"One of the doctors," he replied, leaving it at that for now. He didn't care to think about a hunt right now, and Ruby was only ever interested on his behalf when it came to hunting anything that wasn't Lilith. "I think it's mostly my abilities screwing me over right now, anyway."
That part was more important than what the hell kind of creature the doctor had been. Or at least it was the part that he couldn't talk about with anyone but Ruby. It didn't matter whether she had the answers or not; it was just nice not to have to dance around it.
He set the gun on top of the dresser and leaned forward, finger pressed against the bridge of his nose. "What about you, what's going on with..." He gestured vaguely at her leg.
Headache or no, it was hard to miss the way she was putting more weight on one side than the other which meant it was still bothering her when it shouldn't have even been an issue in the first place. Was she actually down to healing like a regular human? In and of itself that was troubling enough, but the implications of it-either way, it looked like they were both treading in new territory.
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Whatever the case, he still looked like crap and probably felt that way too. Maybe it was the drugs mixing with the headache from using his abilities? It usually wasn't this bad.
Then again, she usually didn't have to sleep. Or eat. Or wait more than a few hours before traumatic wounds healed, and on a scale of 1 and getting shot in the chest, the gash in her thigh hadn't even rated.
"Honestly? No clue. It still hurts a little. Hell, the nurses even had me on painkillers this morning. The stitches are pretty nice, though. Dissolvable. We'll have to get some for the next time I have to patch you up."
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She wasn't a demon, but he still maintained that she sure as hell sounded like one. But then again, those things usually all talked the same, anyway, so that might've been a moot point. Dean's deal hadn't exactly been secret, he was sure. The supernatural underworld might not have interacted a whole lot, but it wasn't as if they existed in isolated bubbles.
"Whatever's going on with my abilities, it's probably happening to you, too." He glanced up, frowning a little. "Reports have been pretty consistent about people being hindered more than usual in one way or another."
Unless there was nothing to hinder, apparently. At least, he hadn't heard Dean complaining of anything. It was still kind of weird to think of Dean as being the odd one out here for being completely normal as opposed to...whatever the rest of them were. Categorizing beyond not totally human was pretty much an impossibility at this point.
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He was so...vulnerable like this. She almost felt guilty about exploiting it.
Almost.
"Probably happening to me? You think?" She groaned. "I hate to say this, but...we need to talk. About this. About what's happening to the both of us. And I need you to do some stuff for me." She shot him a meaningful look. "Starting with the C-word."
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That couldn't have given her much blood which meant...what? That she only needed a little bit to sustain herself? Or was it the only way she could do it without arousing suspicion?
If Sam hadn't been so out of it earlier, he would've thought to ask the rest of the patients. From what he could remember of that one time people had talked about this, though, it didn't sound like anyone had an experience such as his. Either someone had chosen to keep their mouth shut about it or he was the first. The only? A possibility.
He drew one leg up, resting his arm on his knee. "She said some shit about Dean, too, I don't know how much she knows for real or what."
Christ, he was too tired to think about this right now. Even before, he hadn't had this much on his hands. Institute crawling with supernatural crap, civilians he should've been able to easily keep out of harm's way but couldn't, the deal, Dean, being trapped here in the first place, and dammit, was Ruby really bringing that up right now?
He sighed. "Ruby, we've already been over this. A lot, in fact. Anyway, you said it yourself, there aren't any demons here. Can't really see how you think it's gonna help either of us."
Even functioning perfectly, what he was capable of wasn't useful, period. Not here. Not against Lelouch, and not against whatever else might be after Dean in this place. Which were plenty of things, apparently. Peter's warning about a potential cannibal in the population wasn't easing his mind any. And yeah, it all came down to Lilith-there was no escape from the deal, only shattering what held it in place; he'd learned that lesson the first round through-and it wasn't as though that was straying far from his mind, but really? Unless Ruby was volunteering herself up as a test subject, he had nothing to use his powers on. Moot point.
Hell, sometimes he wasn't even sure if it was enough, what he could do.
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They simply couldn't afford to lose the only person capable of breaking the final seal.
"What, about the deal?" She leaned forward, appropriately concerned but not exactly gushing with emotion. She didn't even know where Dean stood with the deal right now, frankly. Had the clock completely reset, or had Dean breaking the first seal in her time carried through everywhere? It was a headache, to say the least. It sounded like something right out of a comic book; too weird even for her tastes...and she was an incorporeal column of black smoke trying to bring about the apocalypse by raising Lucifer. Weird went a long way for her.
When Sam started going on about something else--did he think she was talking about the blood? maybe she'd gotten further with him here than she'd thought--Ruby leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "That's not what I meant," she said patiently. Her eyes opened, and they were inky black. She didn’t need a mirror to know that they were; she just felt it. It was one of the few things she was certain of in this place, and that was comforting. Sort of.
“Sam, I’m sleeping like a human, bleeding like a human, and healing like a human. I need to know what my limits are right now, because, honestly, I don’t know what they are right now. If that means you have to throw salt at me or start chanting Latin, go ahead. The last thing I need is to slip up in front of your brother…or random Joe Patient out there.”
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Wait.
He lifted an eyebrow. "You want me to try an exorcism on you?"
Though she was right. They needed some ground rules and Ruby was probably the easiest to start with out of the two of them. She was obviously still a demon, judging from the eyes-and he'd stopped dwelling on how it didn't even make him blink anymore, to see her switch them on and off-so it wasn't as though she'd somehow turned entirely human. That left determining just how much demon remained.
Man, if there was one thing he thought he'd never be doing.
"And yeah, the deal," he went on. "She seems to think his soul's hers for grabs anytime since...you know. She's not a demon, so I doubt she can personally reap anything, but." Or could she? There was no telling here, was there. It wasn't as if the realm of the supernatural was the most predictable, but it was usually more grounded than this. This was like walking across a minefield while blindfolded.
He tipped his head back against the pillows, eyes on the ceiling. "I mean, it's not out of the question, right? That he's already, I don't know. Long past his due date."
And if so, what the hell was he supposed to tell Dean? He couldn't bring himself to say anything until he knew for certain, but even the possibility of it, what was he supposed to do with that? The idea of springing this on top of the truth at Dean, goddamn it. He didn't even want to consider it, but if it was true, he couldn't keep it from his brother.
Maybe he shouldn't be jumping the gun yet. Still, his resources were pretty damn limited. All he had to go on here were the words of other people, most of whom were hardly what he'd call reliable. He had no idea what to think about anything.
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Funny how things changed.
"Demons aren't the only ones who take souls," she reminded Sam, “but other than that I don’t know if I can help you.” It would be hard to narrow it down, though, without Sam’s laptop and a way to search for lore. Her familiarity with those kinds of nasties wasn’t that extensive.
As for Dean… “I can’t tell you either way. It’s not as if this is exactly a common occurrence, and I can’t really ask. Not in any way you’d approve of, at least. I haven’t got a silver chalice, and it’s not exactly like I can go around procuring the lifeblood of an innocent. If I had sources to work here, trust me. I’d be asking. This is just too…different.”
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Well, it wasn't the same, that was all. If it came down to a choice between the two, he knew what he'd pick.
He dropped the subject, not too willing to get into it at the moment, not even with Ruby. She was right: there wasn't much either of them could do. They might as well sort out this thing with Ruby first. It was more productive.
"We're out," he replied. Of all the things they could run low on, salt was never one that should've been on the list. Their situation here was more than a little ridiculous; it was bordering precariously on outright pathetic. But they could barely get two steps out of the hallway without getting jumped at this point. "But we could start with a Christo instead."
He glanced at her, and he couldn't decide if he was curious on a strictly objective level or if he was actually a little concerned about what would happen. If it would affect her or not. He didn't know what he'd make of it if it didn't. He'd come across plenty that defied the rules he'd grown up with, but at least those, he'd been able to consider it a result of parallel universes, separate dimensions, or something that caused a twist in the way things worked. There was none of that with Ruby.
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"Well, that answers that question." So some things, at least, hadn't changed. That was comforting, sort of. Apparently whatever was happening to her hadn't changed what was fundamentally demonic. Still, it was slightly disappointing, as well. If Dean decided to start dropping Christos around her, she wouldn't be able to avoid the...awkwardness that would result.
She scooted her chair a little closer to Sam so that her knees brushed against the bed. "A hunter without salt? Kinda sad." They'd probably have go looking for more, wouldn't they? Especially after that ghost from last night.
"Oh, I heard we're going on a field trip tomorrow, by the way," she said conversationally, changing the topic slightly. "You know anything about that?"
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"Tell me about it."
Though the salt was a band-aid solution at best, if even that. You could spin a circle around yourself or you could chuck it at a spirit, but sooner or later, it was gonna come back to bite you in the ass. That was what burning the bones was for, except that wasn't exactly feasible. Tracking down the source of a spirit already took a few days as it was with all their resources on hand.
As for the field trip. Right, they were heading out again, weren't they? Man, had it only been a week? They must've done some kind of magical hand-waving fix over the town, then, because he was pretty sure that place was looking like it'd been firebombed by the end of the night. No way they could've cleaned that up in a month, never mind a week.
"Yeah, it's, uh, it's a town called Doyleton, about a forty minute ride up a mountain path. I didn't recognize the landscape, no real landmarks. Your typical small town, but in a real Stepford way. Oh, and there are zombies," he added dryly. "They just pop up out of the ground once the sun sets, apparently. I've been leaning towards a curse, but beyond that, I'm out of ideas. I wasn't there for the main action. Dean was pretty messed up, spent most of my time trying to keep him from being a chew toy."
God, he hoped there wasn't going to be a repeat of that night. Even if the survival rate had been unnaturally high. He was glad, of course, but it felt sinister regardless. Stuff like that just didn't happen and if it did, it was usually an indicator of something much worse.
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But still. Zombies. She shook her head. "Wow. First you've got ghosts that shoot swords, and then you have zombies. Oh, and blood-sucking psychiatrists." There was a joke to be made about the last one, but Ruby refrained. It was too obvious, and where was the fun in that?
"We really did end up in a B-horror movie." She was beginning to wonder if the whole thing wasn't one giant curse, but she couldn't think of anything that could be this...extensive. Other than demigods, of course, but they weren't usually this arbitrary, were they? If they did round up more than one person at a time, those people tended to be connected in some way. Given what she read on the bulletin board, some of the people were connected, but not all of them.
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He figured Ruby would find that as unsurprising as he did. There were only so many things that could infect the bloodstream at the same time, after all. The Croatoan virus had made that more than obvious. And while he wasn't going to turn away one of the few good things to having demon blood running through him, he couldn't say it was a comforting thought, either.
Dean's reaction when he'd told him had hardly helped. He knew he couldn't blame his brother for that, but it stung nevertheless, the way Dean always skirted around it or shrugged it away. We're not gonna acknowledge all the ways you're not normal.
He shook it off.
"I, uh, I have-" Sam pushed himself upright, pausing a second until the spike between his eyes died back down to a more tolerable dull throb. Somewhat. He slipped a hand beneath the pillow, fingers closing around the notebook. He hadn't had time to write down all that he'd seen; the notes were haphazard collections off of the board mostly, eyewitness accounts on the various monsters and stuff. He wouldn't call it reliable material, given the source it came from, but it wasn't as if he could afford to be picky about his research tools here.
He handed the notebook off to Ruby. The newspaper he'd taken from Doyleton was folded inside. Useless, except for the thing about the dates. Or lack thereof. No date, no year, just a day of the week that didn't match with the one that he knew it should've been instead. "It's not everything, but you might as well take a look."
As opposed to him explaining it all, in other words, 'cause his brain wasn't going to make it through a full rundown of everything he'd learned. Not tonight.
[orite, notes are here. :|b]
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Ruby paused when Sam did, eyes flicking up and taking in his obvious discomfort. She didn’t say anything, just waited for it to pass. Sam wasn’t expecting any comforting from her (she would have questioned his sanity if he had, since she’d never exactly been caring and matronly before), and calling attention to it wasn’t going to do anything either. She just took the notebook and looked it over. His writing was scrawled all over the pages, a collection of disjointed notes and people spoken to. More interesting than the stuff about zombies was the newspaper itself. “No date,” she said out loud, surprised. What kind of newspaper didn’t put a date on their stuff? Even the ugliest hand-printed newsletter from the lowliest little trailer park in Nowheresville, USA included a full date in its masthead, not just a random day of the week. “There’s no way this is actually legit. If it were, there’d be a date.” It was just as simple as that.
“Do you think it could have been a plant? The place sticks fake newspapers in town to throw people off on where-and when-we could actually be? Seems awfully…elaborate, though.” But this was Landel’s, she had to remind herself, not anywhere that actually played by the rules, and the good doctor himself was currently rambling on about a war and a project of some sort. They were all about the elaborate, illogical solutions.
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"That's pretty much what I've spent the past ten days or something trying to decide," Sam replied. "Half the time, it feels like everything's just fake, you know? I mean, it'd explain everything, I just, I don't know if it's the right answer. It's almost too neat."
He'd bounced back and forth with this issue on and off constantly, including earlier today, and he'd come up with no solid leads, not even close. He'd told Dean he wanted to look into it, figure this out, but Dean had asked him how, and yeah, he didn't know. Somehow was starting to feel less and less like a good response.
Besides, if the dates were false, and the town was false, and the institute, where did it even stop? At the events that occurred within it or at the patients? What about the ones like Peter's brother who'd gone and come back and gone again? Sam had managed to turn off that part of his brain that kept nagging that Dean wasn't really here (and Christ, in that case, who knew if Ruby was real at that?) because he didn't think he could deal with the uncertainty of Dean's actual existence, but the question reared up from time to time.
And honestly, he was surprised no one had truly brought this up. Not to the full extent that it needed to be explored, that was, not even back before the nurses had started cracking down on that board everyone used as a public forum.
Then again, he was the only one here with a brother who had an expiration date. His focus was probably different from the others here.
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