The Wasteland Part IV: And let the dark come upon you
Title: The Wasteland Part IV: And let the dark come upon you
Author: The Mad Tea Girl
Series: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Ruby, Chuck, Dean, Castiel, mentions of Sam/Ruby
Rating/Warning: PG-13
Summary: There isn't anything left worth fighting for, so she can't even make herself care that the world is ending. Spoilers for all aired episodes.
Author's Notes: It's been about three months since the last chapter of this that I posted, so my apologizes to all three of you who read this, also it's by far the longest chapter yet. This might be slightly AU at this point, since I had finished writing this chapter before the season 5 finale aired. As always, the Ruby in this work is Katie!Ruby, Should be read after Part I, Part II and Part III. I must also, once more, send a huge round of love and thank to suchaprince, my amazing beta, without whom this series would be a grammatical travesty.
And let the dark come upon you
**
“And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you”
- “Four Quartets 2: East Coker Part III” by T.S. Eliot
**
It had become that day again, the day she died. There had been so much snow, and she had shook from the cold and from the terrible fear that knotted in her stomach. Her knees had buckled under her, and the massive amounts of blood that saturated the snow around her soaked into her skirt nearly to the hips.
The blood was everywhere; on her hands, and in her hair. There was nothing left but the blood. It wasn’t just that she had killed them. She had obliterated them. And the power of what she had done still hummed through her bones.
“I didn’t mean to kill them” She whispered to nobody at all while her breath made tiny clouds in the frozen air.
She had heard a voice calling her name, a name that even now she couldn’t remember, a name she hadn’t heard in centuries.
Her mother had stood in the clearing, eyes wide with horror, and she had scrambled to her feet and walked unsteadily to her, holding her arms out for comfort. Her mother recoiled with a slight hiss.
“What have you done?”
**
She had awoken with the rough feeling of unfinished floorboards cutting up her cheek. Her wrists were free from the shackles, but angry red scars marked where the iron had burned into her flesh. And there was a sore throbbing in her abdomen, lifting her shirt slightly revealed an even worse gash running nearly from her navel to the bottom of her ribcage.
Ruby pressed her hands to the floor beneath her, feeling the dull power throb through the crudely made Key of Solomon painted there. Her brain sifted through the dream she had pulled herself from, as she tried to remember how she had ended up imprisoned in this tiny cabin.
Sam didn’t make it.
Her stomach lurched violently. She dug her fingernails into the floorboards for support as she retched loudly. After the heaving subsided she sat back, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, dimly noting the splinters that had wedged themselves into her fingertips.
Sam was dead.
And she was trapped in an over glorified tool shed. The moon was a pale thumbnail outside the single, tiny, barred window. She knew from the phase that it had been at least a month that she had been catatonic. But it didn’t really matter to her. The utter pointlessness of everything weighed heavily on her.
The only thing that had held any significance was finding Sam, but she had failed, and now she was just tired. She found herself being called back in unconsciousness, regardless to the fact that she had just slept for well over a month.
**
Lucidity was becoming more and more rare for her. Every so often she would open her eyes into reality.
The moon would be in a different phase and occasionally there would be a plate of food at the edge of the Devil’s trap. She was aware at times that a man had entered the cabin, and that he was the one who brought the food. But she never bothered to look at him. And he never tried to make her.
**
She dreamed often of the last day that she was human.
She dreamed of her mother’s fingers twisting in her hair and dragging her into town.
She dreamed of the screams and accusations of the villagers, and she dreamed of the feeling, and the smell her flesh had made when she had burned.
But every so often she dreamed about the day she first saw Sam Winchester.
He had been confused. Angry. Awkward. His brother had a year to live, and the desperation of trying to find a loophole in this was all over him.
She couldn’t even remember exactly why she had so plainly told him that she could save his brother, other than the fact that she would save Dean Winchester if that was the only thing that would erase the unending torment in his younger brother’s eyes.
She hadn’t minded that he would only meet her clandestinely, it was no secret even then how much Dean despised her. For her part she had really tried to find something that would save him, but every Cross-Road’s Demon she had managed to dig up had told her his contract was air tight. Even Crowley, self proclaimed King of the Crossroads, could find no leeway in Dean’s contract. She had, admittedly, never told Sam this, and she had, also, perhaps strung him along.
But she hadn’t been able to let go, something about him created a sort of peace in her.
And the rare occasion that he had smiled, made her remember what it had felt like to be human.
**
She had jolted awake from a dream of screaming and flames when noticed a figure in the corner of the dark room.
Her throat felt thick and sore from disuse and it took a moment before she could force out words.
“You’re an angel, right? I can smell it on you. Which one are you?”
He regarded her like an exhibit in a science fair.
“I am Castiel, I came to see if you had regained consciousness and to offer you food.” He raised his hand, in which he held something rectangular and wrapped in foil. “I am told that these are called ‘pop tarts’, and that they are ‘crazy good.’ ”
She let out a snort.
“I’m sorry, I’m trying to get my brain around an angel of the Lord offering me Pop Tarts.”
“I know the difficulty of maintaining a vessel does occasionally entail remembering to feed it, and these are chocolate banana split. They have a pleasing flavor, if not a slightly distressing color.” She had started laughing sometime during his Pop Tarts lecture and he tilted his head at her. “What is so amusing to you?”
“Oh Angel-cakes, it’s all funny. The world is ending, I’ve lost all direction, and I’ve got a fucking ANGEL offering me Pop Tarts.”
“You mentioned that before, yes.” Castiel said patiently.
“Well, why don’t you sit down? We’ll make a tea party out of it. I mean, it’s the Apocalypse, that’s when these things are supposed to happen right? An angel and a demon bonding, that’s right up there with dogs and cats living in sin.”
“There isn’t any tea in camp.” He said without so much as a blink, but he sat down all the same, cross legged at the edge of the devil’s trap. He once more indicated the foil wrapped pastries, and with a sigh Ruby snatched them.
If there was one thing Ruby knew that she was going to miss now that the apocalypse was at hand, it was chemical laden junk food. The banana pop tarts were no twinkies, but still, sugars and synthetic colors aplenty. Castiel had produced a second package from the pocket of his trench coat and was nibbling on the edge of a pastry.
“So…” Ruby said, with a measured attempt at sounding casual “How long was I out, exactly?”
“Six months, two weeks, and three days.” He told her through a mouthful of toaster pastry.
She breathed in sharply. “Really… have I missed anything?”
“The Croatoan virus has begun to spread faster, hundreds of humans were infected through a supposed flu vaccination, and they spread it to others. Whole counties, in some cases states, are entirely gone now.”
She stopped chewing and stared at him.
“It’s moving that fast already?” The angel shifted a bit on the floor as he bit into the second pastry.
“It’s like you said. It’s the End of the World.”
**
“Seriously,” Sam said, with a slightly disdainful wrinkle of his nose. “What is it with you and ketchup?”
“Hmm?” Ruby replied, a fat drop of the red condiment fell off the fry she was about to put in her mouth, and landed on the table in front of her with a pronounced plopping noise. He prodded the small plate that sat in the middle of the table between them, laden to the top with ketchup. Ruby shook her head, wiping a stray bit of the red sauce from the corner of her mouth with the heel of her hand.
“And why can’t you order your own fries?” He asked, sighing heavily, he’d already known the answer; they’d had the same conversation before.
“They taste better off of your plate.” She replied, taking another fry from his plate, swiping a generous amount of ketchup onto it and popping it into her mouth. She grinned at him, she was almost embarrassed at the level of giddiness she felt. Sitting in a greasy dinner off the side of the freeway, eating French fries and pouring over a battered road map.
She had never felt happier at any point in her existence.
Sam stared at her, smiling just the slightest bit, completely in spite of himself.
“You’re making a mess.” He told her.
“I am?” She asked, tilting her head to the side quizzically. He laughed a little, a short, low chuckle in the back of his throat, and leaned slightly across the table. Ruby’s breath hitched in her chest, her whole body tensed in anticipation of what he would do. It made her feel slightly ridiculous.
Sam swiped his thumb lightly under her bottom lip, and she shivered. He held his hand up to her, a smear of red across his finger, and an impossible grin on his face.
**
She opened her eyes to see that the moon was in a much different phase then the last time that she had looked up at it. She had no idea how long she had slept this time. She almost found it strange that she now slept for days, weeks, or even months on end. She would have found it strange, if she really cared about anything anymore.
She smelled him even before he came staggering into the shed. A pungent, herbal smell, it reminded her of the 1960’s. Castiel swayed slightly, putting a hand flat against the wall to steady himself. Ruby propped herself up on one elbow, and took in his dilated pupils, coupled with the scent, and his lugubrious movements.
“Pardon me Angel-cakes, but it seems to me that you are on drugs.” She said evenly, Castiel gave a serene nod.
“Today I have discovered Marijuana.” He said, grinning stupidly.
“Right. And the reason for this is…?”
“They’re gone.” Castiel said shortly, the look of bliss on his face vanishing. Ruby sat up and peered at him.
“Who’s gone Cas?”
“The angels. All of them. They’ve all left, gave up on the war and abandoned ship, no idea where to. I am completely cut off from them all now, which means my powers are nonexistent. Basically I’m human now. And oh yes, our great and fearless leader, Dean Winchester, is getting more megalomaniacal as the days go by. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to appoint himself King of America, although he wouldn’t have many followers since most of the country is dead or infected. Maybe we could get him a hill to stand on and proclaim himself King of the Mountain. Don’t you think he’d like that? I think he’d like that.”
“Seriously though, reefer, Cas?”
“Chuck gave it to me.” Ruby sighed, heavily.
“I think you should sit down before you hurt yourself.” She told him evenly, Castiel obligingly, if not awkwardly, lowered himself into a sitting position at the edge of the Devil’s trap. The serene smile had returned to his face. He reached over and patted her on the head clumsily.
“I like you Ruby. I’m glad Dean let me keep you.” She frowned at him.
“I’m not your pet Terrier, Cas.”
“Of course not, if you were a canine you would be a Doberman.” She opened her mouth to object, before realizing that he had already fallen asleep on the floor.
**
Her dreams were more and more of Sam.
She would dream about the times she had sat on the edge of the double bed opposite him, and talked to him until he could finally sleep.
Or the time when he had fallen asleep while she was driving, his head inadvertently coming to rest on her shoulder. All the dreams were ridiculously vivid, down to the feel of the motel bed sheets and the smell of his soap.
She woke up, more often than not, to find Castiel leaning against one of the corners of the shed, or sitting, back propped against the wall. It had become apparent that her little holding cell was his preferred retreat. And she didn’t mind, which surprised even her.
Sometimes they sat in silence; sometimes he told her what news he had acquired about the events going on outside the quiet of the camp. And whenever Dean’s band of misfits returned from a scavenging mission with some sort of junk food, Castiel always managed to sneak her some. Most notable was the time that he had brought her an entire box of Hostess Snowballs.
She would have found this sort of friendship that had formed between them stranger, but it was the end of days, and she knew that it wasn’t even within the top ten strangest things occurring.
**
She jolted violently awake from a dream of Sam’s hands in her hair and his breath hot on her face.
The door to the shed had slammed open, and the man who stood silhouetted in the door frame swayed on his feet slightly. Over the past few months she had watched Castiel enter a downward spiral, ever since the angels left, ever since he became human. The drugs helped him deal with the state of the world, helped him deal with the camp, and more than anything helped him deal with what Dean had become. It was the only way he came anywhere near even the smallest increment of happiness.
They were quite the pair. Castiel got stoned most days of the week, Ruby slept as much of her life away as she could. But this was different, she didn’t sense the sort of serenity he generally had about him under the influence of the drugs. And despite herself, that actually worried her.
“Cas…?” She asked cautiously into the dark, struggling to make her eyes adjust in the dim light.
“It’s all over” he mumbled, staggering into the small patch of moonlight, before sinking to his knees on the ground next to her. “This might very well be our last night on Earth, so I brought whiskey.” He told her, wiggling the said bottle of alcohol in front of her face. She immediately noted that it was barely half full.
“What are you talking about?”
“The little scavenging mission Dean and his followers went on today, they finally discovered what he’s been looking for over the past year or so. The Archangel Michael’s sword, the one used to send Lucifer to Hell in the first place. According to the lore it’s the one thing that can kill him. So tomorrow Dean intends to try to kill the Devil. Most of the camp will probably be killed by the demons guarding the perimeter of where Lucifer is currently holed up. And even if Dean makes it past those defenses, more than likely by using the rest of us as meat-shields, the odds are not that Lucifer will kill him before he can even make an attempt to use the sword on him.”
“Wow…” she murmured. Castiel offered her the bottle again, she shook her head, and with a shrug he tipped it back into his mouth. The silence in the room felt heavy, punctuated only ever so often by the sound of Castiel’s nails against the neck of the bottle, and the occasional moan of the wind outside. Eventually he turned to her, looking with a sort of sympathy, despite the clouded effect the alcohol was obviously having on his eyes focusing on her face.
“I could let you out.” He said finally, and she raised an eyebrow. “There’s no reason for you to be stuck here, I could let you out, you could run to somewhere that might be less touched by the destruction. There must be something out there you want.” Ruby shook her head.
“Mankind will go extinct whether or not I’m in here, so I might as well stay. With Sam dead there really isn’t anything left for me out there.” She told him. He looked at her as though she had just said the strangest thing imaginable.
“Sam isn’t, exactly, dead Ruby. He didn’t die, he said yes.” She felt cold. A mixture of rage and determination began to build inside of her.
“None of you are going to die tomorrow, Cas. Now you’ll want to get back a bit.” It was practically a hiss. There was a power swelling up in her, like she hadn’t felt in ages. It made her feel raw. Alive. Craving revenge.
Her eyes became entirely black as she moved into a crouching position, palms flat against the floor. The feeling of power was stronger, and she pushed it out towards her hands. A low rumble began through the ground, until the floorboards directly in front of her cracked with a hissing sound. Successfully dismantling the Devil’s trap’s function, she got to her feet and stepped over the painted lines that she had sat within for what had to be nearly two years.
Castiel looked at her slightly aghast as she walked towards him.
“Don’t worry, Dean won’t die tomorrow. Neither will you.” She said before rising up slightly on her toes to press her lips against his cheek, she walked out into the cold winter night.
**
She held her hand out in front of her, and the door splintered with little to no effort. She stepped through the ruined frame, and Dean scrambled to his feet as she entered. He grabbed for the shotgun he kept by his bed, but with a flick of her wrist she had him pinned against the wall and his gun clattering to the floor.
Ruby stood in front of him, arms crossed and teeth clenched.
“I think it’s about time you and I had a little talk,” she growled through her teeth.
“How did you get out…?” He choked out against the mystical hold on him.
“Oh Dean, you seem to forget that I was a witch long before I was a demon. I have magicks darker and more powerful than you’ve ever come up against, so believe me when I say the only reason you kept me as a pet for as long as you did was because I let you.”
“Then why?” She waved away his comment.
“Because I figured your little summer camp for idiots was as good a place as any to be when mankind was wiped out. It was going to happen whether I was here or Nairobi, and I never much cared for arid weather.” She examined her fingernails as she spoke, before looking back at him. “The point of this little conversation, Dean, is that you told me Sam was dead. He isn’t really dead at all is he? You don’t know me very well, so I’ll cut you a tiny bit of slack, but here’s a tip: I don’t respond well to people lying to me.”
“He’s as good as dead. He’s nothing but Lucifer’s meat-puppet now.” She nodded sagely.
“Mmm, I heard that he said yes, and that made me think: what on earth could possibly make him do that? My guess is it had to do with you. How did you let this happen?” She asked before pressing two of her fingers against his forehead. She recoiled with a look of disgust. “You let him make a deal with Lucifer? The reason he said yes was to save your pathetic life? You’re that selfish that you would let your little brother become Satan’s plaything just to save an insect like you?”
“I couldn’t stop him…” Dean choked out. Ruby clenched and unclenched her fists, attempting to keep the rage inside her somewhat in check.
“Where’s the sword?” She all but hissed at him. Dean’s mouth opened, she could see the question forming, and she had no time for it. “Where is Michael’s fucking sword Dean?” It was becoming increasingly harder to keep the urge to kill him at bay. He managed to motion weekly towards the cabinet on the other side of the room. She smiled at him wanly. “Thank you.” Ruby told him before smacking his head back into the wall hard enough to knock him unconscious, but not enough to kill him.
She could feel the vibrations of the sword’s power before she had even opened the cabinet. And when she picked it up she could immediately feel it beginning to burn into the flesh of her palm. If the sword could kill an Archangel, it stood to reason that it would be toxic to a demon. The burn of it was nearly excruciating, but she was beyond caring. She felt the electric throbbing of the sword deep into her bones.
And she knew that it would lead her directly to Lucifer
**
The snow crunched under her boots, Ruby had a deep seated hatred of snow. But she barely noticed it now, all she felt was the burning hum of the sword in her hand, and a power rushing through her veins like she hadn’t felt in years.
The whole city was deserted, and without people to plow them, the streets were covered in a thick layer of snow. It crunched under her boots. Ruby had a deep seated hatred of snow, but she barely noticed it now, all she felt was the burning hum of the sword in her hand, and a power rushing through her veins like she hadn’t felt in years.
She walked down the road, and the sword hummed harder as she got closer to the ornate mansion at the end of it. The large wrought iron gates squeaked on their hinges as she pushed through, and regarded the expansive lawn leading up to the house, complete with topiaries that were too overgrown, and snow covered to resemble anything now.
She sensed the two figures even before they stepped out from behind the topiaries, a tall man, and a smaller brunette woman. The woman smiled in a way that was more of a sneer.
“Look Brian, our little sister has come to visit! Now we can have that family reunion we’ve been planning for the last couple of years!” She said with a dark laugh, that the man at her side echoed. Ruby regarded them both evenly.
“Hello, Meg.”
“Oh Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Our own little black sheep finally came trotting back. You have no idea how much trouble you’re in. You really should have stayed wherever you were hiding, sweetie.”
“Well, you know how awkward I find family get-togethers.” Ruby replied nonchalantly. Meg stuck her bottom lip out in a mock-pout.
“So naughty, I think our little sister needs a time-out Brian.” The man grinned and moved towards her, cracking his knuckles.
In a single fluid movement, Ruby thrust the sword through his slightly opened mouth. It made a satisfying crackling noise, like electricity, as she pulled it out of his skull. Meg’s eyes widened and she moved to retreat, but too slowly as Ruby grabbed her by the hair. She twisted her fingers in it, dragging Meg close enough to whisper in her ear.
“Well big sister,” Ruby growled. “I think it would be in your best interest if you took me to see the boss now.”
**
The room that Meg awkwardly stumbled into, with Ruby close behind, holding her sword barely a breath from the small of Meg’s back, was as large and ridiculous as one would expect from the outside of the mansion.
There was a small group of men standing around a desk in the center of the room, the tallest, in his well tailored suit, had his back to her. Even as the other men looked up at the two women with curiosity. Ruby shoved Meg towards the men, and braced herself as for a fight. Lifting the sword at eye-level, the humming in it fiercer, even as it burned more painfully than before.
“LUCIFER!” She yelled, squaring her shoulders. The man in the tailored suit turned to face her. And even though she knew: how he would be. How he would look. The sight of him caused a low, cold, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
He smiled at her, brightly, the smile that Sam Winchester rarely had. It was beaming at her from Sam Winchester’s face.
“Ruby.” Lucifer said, sounding altogether pleased. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”
Previous Chapter