Supernatural fic: Hearts Like Ruined Cities
Pairing: Sam/Ruby
Rating: R
Length: 6,519 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Sex, swearing, violence. Spoilers for seasons four and five.
Notes: Fabulous beta by the wonderful elanurel, hand-holding courtesy of neuxue. Written for spn_hetexchange round two.
Hearts Like Ruined Cities
She crawls out of the pit halfway dead, possesses the first unlucky bastard she can find. It’s a young girl, maybe fourteen, hitchhiking on a lonely stretch of Highway 412 somewhere outside of Tulsa. The girl’s body collapses into the scrub by the side of the road, Ruby too exhausted to will her new meatsuit to stay on its feet.
She lays there for a long time, letting the body shudder and shiver as it adjusts to her presence, lungs filling with air that doesn’t smell like sulfur and blood and rotted meat for the first time in what feels like centuries.
If she were human, she might consider it a blessing. She doesn’t, of course. She’s a demon, the burned-out husk of a woman who never believed in blessings to begin with.
When she can stand, she flags down the first rig that comes her way - an eighteen-wheeler that’s seen better days.
The driver leers at her as she climbs in, eyes lingering too long on a barely pubescent body. She pretends not to notice and settles into the passenger seat like she’s planning to stay.
She’s not, but he won’t be alive long enough for that to matter to him.
They drive in silence for nearly thirty miles, his hand inching closer and closer to her as the miles tick by. Then he’s touching her, thick fingers sweaty on the bare skin of her thigh. His wrist snaps with a sickening crunch in her grip and he cusses, gasping, before she slams his head into the steering wheel hard enough to crack his skull.
She ditches the truck just outside of Tulsa, and the girl with it. Ruby shucks the body in the rest stop bathroom, but not before she slips a wallet loaded with enough cash to get the kid wherever it is that she’s going into the pocket of her ratty cutoffs.
She leaves in the body of a twenty-something waitress, lungs blackened from her two-pack habit. The air smells like diesel fumes and greasy diner food, and her breath rattles in her chest.
She breathes deep anyway.
Ruby’s not much for eighties anything, but the ’85 Cutlass she jacks from the parking lot runs, and that’s enough for now.
She puts Tulsa in the rearview mirror, and tries not to think about the girl she left slumped over in a dingy bathroom stall, looking young and fragile in the flickering fluorescent light.
She’s only partially successful.
-
Kansas is nothing but wheat fields and open road. The wind buffets her through the open window, her hair blowing in a wild tangle around her face. A flash storm opens up above her, hot rain hitting the pavement with an electric hiss, sibilant.
The air tastes like ozone on her tongue, and Ruby can’t quite control the curve of her lips as she drives through the storm.
She keeps the window open.
-
She heads west until the Cutlass dies, picks up a new ride and a lead on Sam. The demon she guts for the information says Utah. She doesn’t even make it to Grand Junction before she hears the whispers, demons muttering about that goddamned Winchester.
Apparently, Sam’s been a busy little boy. There are demons outright fleeing from the carnage. Ruby heads straight for it, borrowed body humming with something like anticipation.
After Colorado, Sam’s not that hard to find. He’s squatting in an old abandoned shithole in Salina, drinking himself blind. It hasn’t dulled his edge. Even drunk to the point of oblivion he’s slaughtering demons left and right.
Ruby lays low once she finds him, circling like some wary bird of prey. She dumps the waitress for a new body, something that will put Sam on edge. He’d gotten too used to her, back before Lilith trashed her pretty little meatsuit.
He needs to remember that she’s dangerous.
The body she chooses looks just enough like Jessica to remind him of all that he’s lost, soft curls in her hair and freckles spattered across her nose.
Her new meatsuit is a college girl, a runner, lungs strong and healthy. Ruby tells herself that she doesn’t miss the crackle when she breathes too deeply. It’s only half a lie. What she really misses isn’t the slight hitch in her breathing but the constant reminder that the shell she’s in is breakable. Fragile.
It’s as close as she’ll ever get to being human.
-
The Cutlass dies a melodramatic death, engine clanking in protest as she guns it toward the Rockies. A billowing cloud of steam signals its final demise. She kicks the tires a few times then hoofs it to the next town, leather jacket slung over her shoulder as the sun beats down on her.
Two towns over, she liberates a beautiful old Mustang from a collector’s garage. It rumbles and snarls when she lights it up, the sound vibrating through her chest like thunder.
Ruby can’t help but glory in it, and she pushes eighty all the way to Salina.
-
Sam has a simple routine. Wakes up. Slugs some whiskey to dull the hangover. Shitty breakfast and worse coffee from the gas station down the road. Buries himself in arcane tomes for hours on end, searching for a way to yank Dean out of the pit. More whiskey. Evening rolls around and he goes hunting, ripping through demons like it’s the only thing keeping him going. Goes back to the house and stitches up his wounds like they belong to someone else. Drinks himself into a coma.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
She’s almost disgusted at how easy it is to corner him and wrench her knife away. The holy water eats at her skin like acid, but it’s worth the burns to watch his eyes go wide when he finally fits all the pieces together.
Ruby cocks an eyebrow and lets a sardonic smile lift the corners of her mouth.
“Did you miss me, Sam?”
-
She slices her thumb on an empty, glass broken from where Sam threw it against the wall. He’s out on an ammo run and she’s seized the opportunity to get rid of his stash.
The blood runs in rivulets down her hand, dropping in garish little splashes onto the dusty floor.
It smells like iron and the dark taint of demon.
Bile rises in her throat, her meatsuit’s revulsion strong enough to push at the boundaries of Ruby’s control.
She swallows down the bile, acidic and bitter. The blood washes away easily enough: the disgust takes longer to fade.
She’s not sure if it ever will - some of it is hers.
-
After months of hard drinking, Sam’s body doesn’t take too kindly to quitting cold turkey. He gets the shakes, wracked with tremors even as he vomits until there’s nothing left in his stomach. He vacillates between extremes, burning hot and freezing cold, all the while covered in sweat.
All in all, it’s not a pretty sight.
She sits watch over him, reluctant to play babysitter but positive that if she leaves him alone he’ll go right back to drinking.
So she stays, and tries to ignore the reek of sweat and vomit and unwashed skin. On the plus side, the place doesn’t smell like a distillery anymore.
It’s not a big deal, at least until he starts having fever dreams, thrashing in bed, calling for Jess and Dean, even for John. She ignores it for a while, but she remembers what it was like to have nightmares - if she could sleep, she would have them still.
Soft and low, almost hesitant at first, she sings. Old songs, just snatches of words she hasn’t heard in centuries. She feels awkward, strange, an imposter in an intimate moment, lullaby curling around him in the dark. Still, her voice calms him. He quiets and she keeps singing, humming when she runs out of words.
When he finally dries out he stares at her through narrowed eyes, a frown on his lips.
“Did you…”
His voice trails off, and she doesn’t answer.
-
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child.
-
“I don’t trust you.”
She sheathes her knife, stepping over the body of the demon that was headed for Sam’s unprotected side.
“That’s fine, Sam. I don’t need you to trust me. You wanna gank Lilith? Then I need you to suck it up and work with me.”
He looks at her, inscrutable, for a long moment.
“Fine,” he says.
He turns away and heads back towards the alley where they stashed the cars, her Mach 1 bright next to the dark shadow of the Impala.
“You coming?”
She follows, a warm curl of success settling in her stomach.
-
He insists on a different body, and she’s worked too hard to lose him over something like that. The hospital has a few Jane Does, but only one of them fresh. Still, she waits until the reaper fades away before she moves in.
Coma girl feels strange. Hollow. There’s a void where there should be the tight knot of terror and memories of a person being possessed. There’s not even a name.
Instead, there’s just Ruby, alone in an empty shell.
Her hands shake as she pulls on her new clothes. Forget the damn waitress, she feels vulnerable, human, like she hasn’t in centuries. She walks the five miles back to the house on foot and tries not to feel too much. Everything is a hot, electric rush of sensation, cascading through her like a flash flood.
Sam opens the door with a shotgun, and she shoves the papers at him.
“Proof,” she snaps, sarcasm covering the tremor in her voice. “This body is 100% socially conscious. I recycle. Al Gore would be proud.”
He looks at her like she’s crazy, and warm inside her new body, feeling human, she can’t disagree with him.
-
The demon surges out of Sam’s control, oily smoke roiling back into the host’s mouth. Sam stumbles back, clutching at his head, blood running in a dark stream from his nose.
The banker’s eyes flash black and even snared in a Devil’s Trap he feels safe enough to taunt Sam.
“So this is Azazel’s Boy King! Such power! Can’t even send one little demon back to Hell!”
“Shut up,” she snarls, and in one fluid move breaks the Devil’s Trap and drives her knife into his gut. Blood and entrails spatter on her shirt, reeking of demon and the fetid odor of decay. The body crumples, nothing even remotely alive left to hold it up. He died while the demon was riding him. Poor bastard never had a chance.
Turning away from the mess, her eyes find Sam. Braced against the wall, he looks like shit.
“It’ll get better, Sam.”
He looks at her, face bleak.
“I could have saved him, Ruby. I could have saved him.”
He’s like this every time, no matter how obvious it is that the host is dead on arrival.
“No, Sam. He was dead before we ever got here.”
The words fill up the space between them, and Sam lowers his gaze to the floor. He carries the weight of every person he can’t save like a cross, no matter that she’s not leading him anywhere close to Calvary.
“I’m not done with you yet, Sam. You’ll get there.”
He stares at her like she has all the answers, and she shoves down the guilt that swells in her chest at the lost look in his eyes.
She’s a demon. She has no use for guilt.
-
She stares at herself in the mirror, and tries to remember what she looked like. She’s forgotten, can only picture the noses and eyes and mouths of the bodies she’s possessed over the centuries, an endless blur of features not her own.
She can’t remember. Standing in front of the glass, the only body she can see herself in is the one in front of her, tall and lean, dark hair falling in long waves past her shoulders.
It scares her, how right this is all starting to feel.
-
“I still remember what it feels like to lose someone.”
The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, laced with the kind of grief time can’t dull.
She shouldn’t be doing this, indulging in old hurts. She shouldn’t even have the memories of her old life - they should have been burned out of her in the pit, lost along with her humanity. She’s not supposed to remember how her sister smiled like the sun, before she was murdered. Memories are a human phenomenon.
Ruby is a demon.
But here in this rundown house, warm in a body that is only hers, she can’t help but feel human.
Sam looks at her like he’s never seen her before, like he never thought she could hurt. She steps toward him, and he doesn’t move away.
Slowly, the distance between them dwindles, and then she’s on her knees in front of him, sliding her hands beneath his shirt, the feel of skin on skin short-circuiting something in her brain.
She kisses him, lips frantic against his. Sam’s mouth is moist and hot, and his fingers tangle in her hair like he wants to keep her there. They fumble at each other, a mess of hands and mouths and something desperate until she strips off her shirt, her bare chest brushing against the fabric of his worn t-shirt.
He jolts like he’s been shocked, and rips away from her, shaking his head. Cold air rushes into the space where his body had been, and she shivers.
“Fuck, Sam.” Her voice is low, suffused with want. She doesn’t want him to stop, doesn’t want him to think. She just wants.
“This is wrong, Ruby. I can’t do this.”
“Please, Sam” she says. She’s on her knees, kneeling in front of him like she’s begging. She feels too human to care.
She leans forward and presses herself against him, kisses the hollow of his collarbone, tongue tasting the salt of his skin.
He groans, and she asks again.
“Please.”
The word unravels the last of his resistance, and his arms surge around her, lifting her up so his hips can grind against hers. It draws a moan from her, her body moving in response, automatic. It feels right to shift her hips, tilt until he’s the one moaning, drag her nails down his back as he slams into her, choke out his name when she comes. It feels right, easy as breathing.
She forgets, in that moment, Sam pressed hot against her, that she doesn’t need to breathe.
-
They fall into a routine, miles on the road and demons exorcised and sex in cheap motel beds.
Mississippi is hot and muggy, cicadas humming in the trees outside their room, wings rustling with loud clicks as they sing. They cut through Tennessee because Sam refuses to come within a two-state radius of Florida unless he absolutely has to.
She never does get the story out of him, but she follows the Impala through Memphis without complaint.
It feels surreal, like they’re on some road trip, like she’s not a demon tricking him into kick-starting the apocalypse.
“See the USA in your Chevrolet!” The jingle runs through her head, cheery and annoying. She’s not even the one driving the damn Chevy. Sam laughs when he hears her humming it, and for the first time since Dean died, it’s a genuine laugh.
She throws a French fry at him, regrets it when she realizes she only has two left.
He’s almost gentle with her that night, hands something like reverent on her skin. It’s like being in somebody else’s life.
The thought hits her like a sucker punch, and she slips away after Sam falls asleep. She heads out to a crossroads, stands there remembering a demon with red eyes, and the fact that she’s got nothing left to sell.
It doesn’t help.
-
She’s losing her edge, wearing down like a knife too long neglected. It’s Sam, she knows. He’s changing her, even as she’s supposed to be changing him.
And she’s running out of time. Word is that Dean’s about to break, and Lilith wants Sam as far along as she can get him by then.
The body she’s in is warm and soft, and hers. She has to loosen her grip a little, let her heart stop beating to remember that even though she’s alone, she’s still an intruder.
She’ll never be human.
So she forces down her all too human disgust, and slices her arm one night as they lie in bed, trying to ignore the sticky mess between her thighs, evidence of her weakness.
“No. No fucking way.”
She almost wants that to be the end of it, but she has a job to do.
“Fine,” she says, watching rivulets of blood run down the pale skin of her arm. “You wanna ruin your only shot at becoming powerful enough to toast Lilith? Go ahead.”
He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her, silent. She waits, and tries not to breathe in the scent of her blood, still rich with iron and demon taint. It fills the room, and she has to work not to gag.
When he turns to face her, his eyes are hard, but his mouth is set in a determined line.
“This is the only way?”
“The only way, Sam.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
He lowers his mouth to her arm, and even as his lips against her skin sends a wave of warmth through her, she tries not to choke on something that might be guilt.
-
She can feel her blood in Sam when he uses his powers. It’s like a tiny piece of her is fueling a storm, the spark of electricity that becomes a bolt of lightning.
She gasps the first time it happens, a current of power running through her like a livewire. Sam gives her a funny look but continues with the exorcism. He pulls the demon in ten seconds flat, sends it screaming back to the pit, and even though she’s the one who’s been nursing it, she’s floored by his power.
He turns to her with a satisfied smile, and she should have some snappy remark, “I don’t know if that was eight seconds, cowboy,” but all she can do is think that he’s almost ready.
All that’s left to do now is wait for Dean to break the first seal.
As she shudders with the last vestiges of his power, she wonders how much time she has left. She’s really not all that surprised to find herself wanting more time than she’s got.
The kicker is that she’s not sure if she wants to go through with any of this anymore.
-
A month slips through her fingers, and then Dean is knocking on the door of their hotel room, panic pooling in her gut.
Sam pretends that she’s some random hookup.
“Sure thing, Cathy.”
It doesn’t take much in the way of acting to orchestrate her escape.
“Christie.”
The hurt is real. It doesn’t matter that she knows it was the smart play, the soft, human part of her hurts. That’s what really pisses her off about the whole thing - it shouldn’t fucking matter, but it does.
She’s a demon. It shouldn’t matter.
She slams the door of the Mustang, vinyl cold against her skin, ready to put Pontiac behind her. She drives until she hits the city limits, waits at a light until it cycles from green to red and back again, cars honking angrily behind her.
Johnny Mac’s diner is two miles from the Astoria, a greasy spoon that’s also the hangout for local demons. She heads there, and doesn’t wait for Sam. Her knife takes care of the first three. The other two run before she can finish them off, but it doesn’t matter.
They’ll be back, looking to finish off Hell’s favorite traitor.
It’s a name she doesn’t know what to make of anymore, so she sits down and pours herself a cup of coffee that she doesn’t drink, and waits for Sam.
-
Alistair’s knife slices through her skin like tissue paper, tracing an intricate pattern of agony across her body. The pain is worse than it’s ever been before, the torture somehow more awful in a vacant body. She arches against her restraints, and screams.
He just laughs his calm, cruel laugh and keeps carving.
Her vision blacks out, spots dancing in front of her eyes, and she gropes desperately for something, anything to shut out Alistair and his knife.
Sam.
She thinks of Sam, of the look on his face the last time she saw him. There was trust there, hard-won and fragile. She can’t lose that. Not yet.
Not yet.
‘Godzilla and Mothra. Godzilla and Mothra. Godzilla and Mothra.’
Mantra running through her head, she shuts her eyes and hopes with every fiber of her being that her plan will work.
-
Anna Milton vanishes in a burst of light, Dean fumbles through an apology, and Sam looks at her with something strange in his eyes.
She’d count it as a win, but it feels like a hollow victory, drawing her one step closer to an end where she’ll lose everything she’s just spent six months building.
The motel bed she’s crashed in is old, springs creaking with every shift in her weight. She stares at the water stains on the ceiling and wonders when the hell it all got so complicated.
The ceiling has no answers for her.
-
She lets the wounds Alistair carved into her flesh scar. They remind her that she’s survived, remind her that if she were human, she would have died.
It’s a last ditch attempt to prove to herself that she’s doing the right thing, playing the double agent. She’s not human. Why should she throw away six hundred years of suffering for a race that seems intent on screwing itself over?
‘Because,’ a part of her says, ‘you like it here. You like the open road and the sound of rain hitting the roof. You like French fries and the feel of Sam’s hands on your skin. You like the Mustang and the smell of clean sheets. You don’t want to give this up.’
It’s the truth.
But in the distorted reflection in the glass next to the bed, she can see her eyes turn black. Her heart still stops beating when she loosens her grip on her recycled body, and she can’t bring herself to change anything.
She started down this road a long, long time ago. It’s too late to turn back now.
-
After the panic room, Sam’s a wreck. He’s jonesing for another hit of blood so badly that he’s shaking. His mouth is frantic against the broken skin of her arm, and she can’t help but throw her head back at the sensation when he slips one hand down between her legs, long fingers sliding in and out of her as he suckles her blood.
It’s wrong. She’s worse than a crack dealer - this is going to destroy him, rip apart his life, tear him away from the only family he’s got left. It’s going to end the whole fucking world, and she’s too selfish to stop, greedy for every little bit of Sam she can get.
She’s leading him like a lamb to the slaughter, and when he collapses next to her, his fingers stroking lazy circles on the scarred skin of her stomach, she’s never felt more like an executioner.
They’ve already made plans for the nurse, the final stage of the trap.
Ruby hates herself for it.
-
It’s all happening too fast, the miles ticking over like they’ve got somewhere better to be. Three hours of driving, and they’re at the convent.
The doors creak open with a groan, the harsh sound of metal grating on metal. It rings in her ears, too loud and too real.
She shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t- she doesn’t want this.
Her fingers snag his jacket, canvas rough against the delicate skin of her knuckles.
“Sam,” she starts, but there’s Lilith, stepping out from behind the altar.
She doesn’t want this. Too bad it’s already started.
-
Somehow, Dean’s there. He’s pounding on the doors like he’ll beat them down if he has to, but Lilith’s got them locked tight. She pries at them with her own power, but she’s so outclassed it isn’t even funny.
She can feel Sam’s power spooling up, a storm gathering in a confined space, air charged and waiting to explode.
“Sam!” she yells, and Dean’s voice echoes hers, muffled from behind the doors. He doesn’t seem to hear either of them, his hand outstretched before him.
Lilith laughs, and his power surges, hitting her like a tidal wave.
It feels like the world is collapsing around her, her two lives crashing together, nuclear fusion for the beginning of the end of the world.
“Stop, Sam!”
He turns then, and his eyes are a familiar, inhuman black.
Dean is still pounding on the door and Lilith is still laughing and Sam’s hand is outstretched, ramping up for the final shot, and Ruby does something stupid and insane and incredibly human.
She throws herself in front of Sam, power slamming into her like a freight train. It feels like she’s unraveling, the core of her being coming undone at Sam’s command. It isn’t like an exorcism, the tug and pull of Latin hauling her down to the pit. It’s like the death knell of a supernova, her soul being yanked from her body at light speed, hurling away into nothing.
Her vision whites out, and she can’t feel anything anymore, not even the electric current of Sam’s power-
Then it all stops, and she falls to her knees, gasping for breath like she’s been drowning. Or dying.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam’s voice, outraged and fucking scared. “I could have killed you!”
“Yes Ruby,” Lilith says, voice cracking against her like a whip. “What are you doing?”
Sam is crouched down beside her like he can protect her. He’ll want to kill her himself when this is all said and done, but that doesn’t matter.
Not anymore.
She drags in one last breath and tries to stand. She finds that she can’t and settles for looking up at Lilith through the dark curtain of her hair.
“It’s over. I choose him.”
Lilith’s face tightens with rage, and her control slips, just for an instant. That’s all Dean needs, bursting through the doors, yelling for Sam to stop.
He pulls up short when he sees that his brother is not in fact ganking the final seal. It only throws him for a minute though, and then he’s wrenching Sam away from her.
“It’s a trap, Sam. You can’t kill her. They lied to you. Lilith is the final seal.”
“What? No. No no no no.” His eyes swing to her, wild and little desperate.
The words taste like ash in her mouth, but she says them anyway. “And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal.”
He stares her, uncomprehending.
“It’s true, Sam. I was supposed to have you kill Lilith, to bust Lucifer out of his cage.”
The past year of her life collapses like a house of cards at the look on his face, and she’s halfway convinced he might just kill her on the spot.
He doesn’t, just looks at her like he doesn’t know her, and then turns slowly back to Dean.
“Okay,” he says brokenly. “I believe you.”
Lilith’s lips curl back in a snarl. “So that’s it, Sam? You turned yourself into a monster and now you’re not going to bite?”
He doesn’t say anything, just lifts his hand. The motion has both Ruby and Dean making a grab for him. Sam shrugs them both off, hard enough to send Dean stumbling backwards and Ruby sprawling on the floor. She feels the growing swell of his power, the storm starting up all over again.
“No, Sam, you can’t do this!” Her voice sounds desperate even to her own ears. “Sam-”
She stops as a column of black smoke erupts from Lilith’s host, a shrieking scream echoing through the convent. Lilith circles, an angry, writhing mass of darkness, then sinks into the floor.
An exorcism.
Sam exorcised Lilith.
It’s over, she thinks wearily, collapsed on the stone floor of an abandoned convent with the brothers who were supposed to be the alpha and omega of the apocalypse.
It’s over.
-Sam can’t even look at her. She talks to the broad expanse of his back instead.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t - I don’t have any excuses. Go ahead and kill me if you want to. You shot your payload on the boss, but Dean’s got the knife. You can end it right now. No one will blame you.”
She runs out of words then, too fucking tired to try and tell him what he’s done to her. She’s not a demon anymore, not really. She wants to try being human with him, but she’s pretty damn sure that’s a pipe dream.
She’s going to die here, gutted like a fish with her own knife. Why waste her breath? It’s stupid, but she’s still got some pride in her.
It always was her greatest sin.
The tension between Sam and Dean is so thick and angry she can feel it from the other side of the room. They argue in harsh whispers, and she can only make out snatches of what’s being said.
“…should gank the bitch right now!”
Her knife looks sharp and vicious in Dean’s hand, and she wonders if it will feel worse than what Alistair did to her.
In the end, Sam says something she can’t quite hear to Dean, and walks away, shoulders rigid and his hands curled into fists.
Dean swears at Sam’s retreating back and walks over to her, a frown etched on his face.
“I don’t like this,” he bites out, lip curling in disgust as he looks at her. “This whole mess? It’s on you. But you stopped him. You stopped him when I couldn’t. I wish you’d never crawled out of the pit in the first place,” he snarls, “but we owe you. And fuck it all if that doesn’t mean something.”
She can’t walk on her own, can barely stand. She gets the feeling that Dean would be all too happy to watch her stumble towards the car, but at the rate she’s going they’ll be here until morning. So he grips her arm like a vice and helps her into the backseat of the Mustang, dumping his jacket over her when she starts shivering and can’t stop.
Cursing under his breath, he slams the door and heads to the Impala. Sam pulls out after his brother, his fingers in a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
The drive until they hit Cleveland, and the only sound to be heard is the rumble of the engine as the miles tick by.
-
The apocalypse that wasn’t sends shockwaves through Heaven and Hell, which the Winchesters promptly ignore.
They go to ground, holed up in a nasty little motel in Detroit. Dean paints sigils she’s never seen before - Enochian, he says - on the walls, and Sam lines the room with salt, the poor man’s version of a safe house.
Ruby just curls up on the bed that’s not covered with their gear, still shaking from her almost-death, and stays out of the way. She’d leave, but she’s got nowhere else to go. Hell will never take her back, and Heaven, well, that was never an option in the first place. The Winchesters are a dangerous unknown, but they’re better than the alternatives.
Absently, she traces the fading scars on her hand, the last remnants of Alistair’s artistry, and wonders what will happen. The motion draws Sam’s gaze, heavy with an emotion she can’t name.
“Why?”
He sounds lost, broken. Searching for answers in a world that no longer makes sense. Didn’t his daddy ever tell him demons always lie?
Because you make me feel human. It was always you, Sam.
Dean walks back in with a bag of food from the greasy spoon diner down the street and pretends to ignore the tension sitting thick and heavy in the room. She takes the box of fries he hands her and pops a few in her mouth. They’re perfect, hot and salty on her tongue.
Deep-fried crack.
“I like French fries too much.”
Sprawled on the other bed, Dean snorts at her answer and tells his brother to stop thinking too hard and eat his damn food.
It’s not the answer Sam wants to hear, not the answer she wants to give, but it can wait. They finish their food in silence, the TV tuned to an eighties action movie marathon, complete with bad hair and overdone explosions.
None of them sleep that night.
-
They stay in Detroit for a week, and from what she knows about Lucifer’s Big Plan that is some potent irony right there. It’s enough to make her laugh.
The arch of Dean’s eyebrow clearly says, ‘the fuck are you laughing about, hellbitch?’
Sam is harder to read, but she knows him better than she knows herself at this point. He’s looking at her like she’s a puzzle he can’t figure out, a monster he doesn’t know how to face.
That just makes her laugh harder. It rolls out of her uncontrollably, the giddy reaction of a survivor who never thought they’d make it. She’s alive. Sam’s alive. The world isn’t ending.
She keeps laughing until her sides are aching and her breath comes in short, hiccupping gasps. The brothers are both staring at her like she’s lost it, and maybe she has.
“We’re alive,” she says when she can breathe again, like that explains it all.
“We’re alive.”
-They roll into South Dakota after a fifteen-hour haul. Bobby calls them idjits and then hugs them both, long and hard. She hangs back, watching from by the cars as Dean explains why they have a demon in tow.
“Dammit, boys!”
“Bobby-”
“Oh, shut up and get in the house.”
Dean complies, shoving Sam in ahead of him. It’s just she and Bobby then, staring at each other across yard. For a moment, it’s like some kind of fucked up Mexican standoff, but then he motions her over and the feeling passes.
Her boots crunch on the gravel as she walks over, and Bobby looks like he wants to douse her with holy water. She’s not going to be drinking anything he offers her, that’s for damn sure.
“I don’t like this neither,” he says slowly, and she winces just a little at the heartland drawl. “You turned Sam into a damn junkie - and if you hadn’t stopped him in the end, I’d gut you with your own knife.” He pauses then, and fixes her with a hard look. “I still might. But Dean’s right. We owe you, and that means somethin’.”
He breaks the salt line for her, points out the Devil’s Traps. She’s pretty sure there’s one or two he doesn’t mention, but she doesn’t hold it against him. She’d probably do the same thing herself, in his situation.
She sinks down onto the musty old couch, fingers a stray thread, and watches Sam, cleaning guns at the kitchen table. He’s already worked over the Smith & Wesson in his hand three times.
He watches her watching him, silence stretching out between them. They jump like startled rabbits when the stairs creak under Dean’s feet. He takes one look at them, lets out a low whistle, and heads right back upstairs.
She rolls her eyes at his retreating form, and turns back to Sam. He’s dropped the gun, all his attention focused on her.
“Why?” he asks again, and he sounds no less lost than he did the first time.
His voice sparks something in her, something other than the numb shock and strange euphoria that’s settled over her since the world didn’t end.
“Well gee, Sam,” she snaps, “I think maybe I just threw away everything I’ve ever worked for on a whim.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He’s angry now too, rising from the chair and stalking toward her.
“I don’t know Sam, you tell me. You tell me, because it sure as hell doesn’t mean that I fucking fell in love with you.”
The words tumble out of her mouth in a rush, a mess of syllables and too much sarcasm. She wants to take them back, but they hang heavy in the air, filling the sliver of space between she and Sam.
“Just answer my goddamned question, Ruby.”
And people call Sam the smart one.
She moves before she has time to think it through, grabbing his hand and pressing it to the spot above her heart. He tries to pull away, but physically he’s no match for her inhuman strength.
“Feel that, Sam?” Her heart beats beneath his palm, quickening at his touch. “That’s why I gave it all up. For you.”
He stares at her, and she plows on before she can start second-guessing herself.
“You make me feel human, Sam. I gave it all up because I wasn’t willing to lose that. I’m still not.”
They stand close like that for a long moment, her words sinking in.
“Okay,” he says finally, “okay.”
-
It’s a start.
Sam’s got a demon blood habit to kick, he and Dean still haven’t figured out how to put things back together between them, and oh yes, they have the combined armies of Heaven and Hell out for their blood.
In the end, though, none of that matters.
They put South Dakota in the rearview mirror after a month at Bobby’s, headed for Louisiana. Revenant sightings in New Orleans, Dean said.
Sam rides with Dean in the Impala. That’s okay, though. She follows in the Mustang, window down and hair blowing in a wild tangle around her face.
The world is still spinning, open roads and rain and French fries and Sam. Her body is warm and soft, and it feels like hers. It feels natural, easy as breathing. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t need to breathe. She can, so she will.
A storm opens up over them as they roll through Kansas, still just wheat fields and open roads. The air tastes like ozone on her tongue, and Ruby can’t quite control the curve of her lips as they drive through the storm.
She keeps the window open.
Feedback is love!
Rating: R
Length: 6,519 words
Status: Complete
Warnings: Sex, swearing, violence. Spoilers for seasons four and five.
Notes: Fabulous beta by the wonderful elanurel, hand-holding courtesy of neuxue. Written for spn_hetexchange round two.
Hearts Like Ruined Cities
She crawls out of the pit halfway dead, possesses the first unlucky bastard she can find. It’s a young girl, maybe fourteen, hitchhiking on a lonely stretch of Highway 412 somewhere outside of Tulsa. The girl’s body collapses into the scrub by the side of the road, Ruby too exhausted to will her new meatsuit to stay on its feet.
She lays there for a long time, letting the body shudder and shiver as it adjusts to her presence, lungs filling with air that doesn’t smell like sulfur and blood and rotted meat for the first time in what feels like centuries.
If she were human, she might consider it a blessing. She doesn’t, of course. She’s a demon, the burned-out husk of a woman who never believed in blessings to begin with.
When she can stand, she flags down the first rig that comes her way - an eighteen-wheeler that’s seen better days.
The driver leers at her as she climbs in, eyes lingering too long on a barely pubescent body. She pretends not to notice and settles into the passenger seat like she’s planning to stay.
She’s not, but he won’t be alive long enough for that to matter to him.
They drive in silence for nearly thirty miles, his hand inching closer and closer to her as the miles tick by. Then he’s touching her, thick fingers sweaty on the bare skin of her thigh. His wrist snaps with a sickening crunch in her grip and he cusses, gasping, before she slams his head into the steering wheel hard enough to crack his skull.
She ditches the truck just outside of Tulsa, and the girl with it. Ruby shucks the body in the rest stop bathroom, but not before she slips a wallet loaded with enough cash to get the kid wherever it is that she’s going into the pocket of her ratty cutoffs.
She leaves in the body of a twenty-something waitress, lungs blackened from her two-pack habit. The air smells like diesel fumes and greasy diner food, and her breath rattles in her chest.
She breathes deep anyway.
Ruby’s not much for eighties anything, but the ’85 Cutlass she jacks from the parking lot runs, and that’s enough for now.
She puts Tulsa in the rearview mirror, and tries not to think about the girl she left slumped over in a dingy bathroom stall, looking young and fragile in the flickering fluorescent light.
She’s only partially successful.
-
Kansas is nothing but wheat fields and open road. The wind buffets her through the open window, her hair blowing in a wild tangle around her face. A flash storm opens up above her, hot rain hitting the pavement with an electric hiss, sibilant.
The air tastes like ozone on her tongue, and Ruby can’t quite control the curve of her lips as she drives through the storm.
She keeps the window open.
-
She heads west until the Cutlass dies, picks up a new ride and a lead on Sam. The demon she guts for the information says Utah. She doesn’t even make it to Grand Junction before she hears the whispers, demons muttering about that goddamned Winchester.
Apparently, Sam’s been a busy little boy. There are demons outright fleeing from the carnage. Ruby heads straight for it, borrowed body humming with something like anticipation.
After Colorado, Sam’s not that hard to find. He’s squatting in an old abandoned shithole in Salina, drinking himself blind. It hasn’t dulled his edge. Even drunk to the point of oblivion he’s slaughtering demons left and right.
Ruby lays low once she finds him, circling like some wary bird of prey. She dumps the waitress for a new body, something that will put Sam on edge. He’d gotten too used to her, back before Lilith trashed her pretty little meatsuit.
He needs to remember that she’s dangerous.
The body she chooses looks just enough like Jessica to remind him of all that he’s lost, soft curls in her hair and freckles spattered across her nose.
Her new meatsuit is a college girl, a runner, lungs strong and healthy. Ruby tells herself that she doesn’t miss the crackle when she breathes too deeply. It’s only half a lie. What she really misses isn’t the slight hitch in her breathing but the constant reminder that the shell she’s in is breakable. Fragile.
It’s as close as she’ll ever get to being human.
-
The Cutlass dies a melodramatic death, engine clanking in protest as she guns it toward the Rockies. A billowing cloud of steam signals its final demise. She kicks the tires a few times then hoofs it to the next town, leather jacket slung over her shoulder as the sun beats down on her.
Two towns over, she liberates a beautiful old Mustang from a collector’s garage. It rumbles and snarls when she lights it up, the sound vibrating through her chest like thunder.
Ruby can’t help but glory in it, and she pushes eighty all the way to Salina.
-
Sam has a simple routine. Wakes up. Slugs some whiskey to dull the hangover. Shitty breakfast and worse coffee from the gas station down the road. Buries himself in arcane tomes for hours on end, searching for a way to yank Dean out of the pit. More whiskey. Evening rolls around and he goes hunting, ripping through demons like it’s the only thing keeping him going. Goes back to the house and stitches up his wounds like they belong to someone else. Drinks himself into a coma.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
She’s almost disgusted at how easy it is to corner him and wrench her knife away. The holy water eats at her skin like acid, but it’s worth the burns to watch his eyes go wide when he finally fits all the pieces together.
Ruby cocks an eyebrow and lets a sardonic smile lift the corners of her mouth.
“Did you miss me, Sam?”
-
She slices her thumb on an empty, glass broken from where Sam threw it against the wall. He’s out on an ammo run and she’s seized the opportunity to get rid of his stash.
The blood runs in rivulets down her hand, dropping in garish little splashes onto the dusty floor.
It smells like iron and the dark taint of demon.
Bile rises in her throat, her meatsuit’s revulsion strong enough to push at the boundaries of Ruby’s control.
She swallows down the bile, acidic and bitter. The blood washes away easily enough: the disgust takes longer to fade.
She’s not sure if it ever will - some of it is hers.
-
After months of hard drinking, Sam’s body doesn’t take too kindly to quitting cold turkey. He gets the shakes, wracked with tremors even as he vomits until there’s nothing left in his stomach. He vacillates between extremes, burning hot and freezing cold, all the while covered in sweat.
All in all, it’s not a pretty sight.
She sits watch over him, reluctant to play babysitter but positive that if she leaves him alone he’ll go right back to drinking.
So she stays, and tries to ignore the reek of sweat and vomit and unwashed skin. On the plus side, the place doesn’t smell like a distillery anymore.
It’s not a big deal, at least until he starts having fever dreams, thrashing in bed, calling for Jess and Dean, even for John. She ignores it for a while, but she remembers what it was like to have nightmares - if she could sleep, she would have them still.
Soft and low, almost hesitant at first, she sings. Old songs, just snatches of words she hasn’t heard in centuries. She feels awkward, strange, an imposter in an intimate moment, lullaby curling around him in the dark. Still, her voice calms him. He quiets and she keeps singing, humming when she runs out of words.
When he finally dries out he stares at her through narrowed eyes, a frown on his lips.
“Did you…”
His voice trails off, and she doesn’t answer.
-
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child.
-
“I don’t trust you.”
She sheathes her knife, stepping over the body of the demon that was headed for Sam’s unprotected side.
“That’s fine, Sam. I don’t need you to trust me. You wanna gank Lilith? Then I need you to suck it up and work with me.”
He looks at her, inscrutable, for a long moment.
“Fine,” he says.
He turns away and heads back towards the alley where they stashed the cars, her Mach 1 bright next to the dark shadow of the Impala.
“You coming?”
She follows, a warm curl of success settling in her stomach.
-
He insists on a different body, and she’s worked too hard to lose him over something like that. The hospital has a few Jane Does, but only one of them fresh. Still, she waits until the reaper fades away before she moves in.
Coma girl feels strange. Hollow. There’s a void where there should be the tight knot of terror and memories of a person being possessed. There’s not even a name.
Instead, there’s just Ruby, alone in an empty shell.
Her hands shake as she pulls on her new clothes. Forget the damn waitress, she feels vulnerable, human, like she hasn’t in centuries. She walks the five miles back to the house on foot and tries not to feel too much. Everything is a hot, electric rush of sensation, cascading through her like a flash flood.
Sam opens the door with a shotgun, and she shoves the papers at him.
“Proof,” she snaps, sarcasm covering the tremor in her voice. “This body is 100% socially conscious. I recycle. Al Gore would be proud.”
He looks at her like she’s crazy, and warm inside her new body, feeling human, she can’t disagree with him.
-
The demon surges out of Sam’s control, oily smoke roiling back into the host’s mouth. Sam stumbles back, clutching at his head, blood running in a dark stream from his nose.
The banker’s eyes flash black and even snared in a Devil’s Trap he feels safe enough to taunt Sam.
“So this is Azazel’s Boy King! Such power! Can’t even send one little demon back to Hell!”
“Shut up,” she snarls, and in one fluid move breaks the Devil’s Trap and drives her knife into his gut. Blood and entrails spatter on her shirt, reeking of demon and the fetid odor of decay. The body crumples, nothing even remotely alive left to hold it up. He died while the demon was riding him. Poor bastard never had a chance.
Turning away from the mess, her eyes find Sam. Braced against the wall, he looks like shit.
“It’ll get better, Sam.”
He looks at her, face bleak.
“I could have saved him, Ruby. I could have saved him.”
He’s like this every time, no matter how obvious it is that the host is dead on arrival.
“No, Sam. He was dead before we ever got here.”
The words fill up the space between them, and Sam lowers his gaze to the floor. He carries the weight of every person he can’t save like a cross, no matter that she’s not leading him anywhere close to Calvary.
“I’m not done with you yet, Sam. You’ll get there.”
He stares at her like she has all the answers, and she shoves down the guilt that swells in her chest at the lost look in his eyes.
She’s a demon. She has no use for guilt.
-
She stares at herself in the mirror, and tries to remember what she looked like. She’s forgotten, can only picture the noses and eyes and mouths of the bodies she’s possessed over the centuries, an endless blur of features not her own.
She can’t remember. Standing in front of the glass, the only body she can see herself in is the one in front of her, tall and lean, dark hair falling in long waves past her shoulders.
It scares her, how right this is all starting to feel.
-
“I still remember what it feels like to lose someone.”
The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, laced with the kind of grief time can’t dull.
She shouldn’t be doing this, indulging in old hurts. She shouldn’t even have the memories of her old life - they should have been burned out of her in the pit, lost along with her humanity. She’s not supposed to remember how her sister smiled like the sun, before she was murdered. Memories are a human phenomenon.
Ruby is a demon.
But here in this rundown house, warm in a body that is only hers, she can’t help but feel human.
Sam looks at her like he’s never seen her before, like he never thought she could hurt. She steps toward him, and he doesn’t move away.
Slowly, the distance between them dwindles, and then she’s on her knees in front of him, sliding her hands beneath his shirt, the feel of skin on skin short-circuiting something in her brain.
She kisses him, lips frantic against his. Sam’s mouth is moist and hot, and his fingers tangle in her hair like he wants to keep her there. They fumble at each other, a mess of hands and mouths and something desperate until she strips off her shirt, her bare chest brushing against the fabric of his worn t-shirt.
He jolts like he’s been shocked, and rips away from her, shaking his head. Cold air rushes into the space where his body had been, and she shivers.
“Fuck, Sam.” Her voice is low, suffused with want. She doesn’t want him to stop, doesn’t want him to think. She just wants.
“This is wrong, Ruby. I can’t do this.”
“Please, Sam” she says. She’s on her knees, kneeling in front of him like she’s begging. She feels too human to care.
She leans forward and presses herself against him, kisses the hollow of his collarbone, tongue tasting the salt of his skin.
He groans, and she asks again.
“Please.”
The word unravels the last of his resistance, and his arms surge around her, lifting her up so his hips can grind against hers. It draws a moan from her, her body moving in response, automatic. It feels right to shift her hips, tilt until he’s the one moaning, drag her nails down his back as he slams into her, choke out his name when she comes. It feels right, easy as breathing.
She forgets, in that moment, Sam pressed hot against her, that she doesn’t need to breathe.
-
They fall into a routine, miles on the road and demons exorcised and sex in cheap motel beds.
Mississippi is hot and muggy, cicadas humming in the trees outside their room, wings rustling with loud clicks as they sing. They cut through Tennessee because Sam refuses to come within a two-state radius of Florida unless he absolutely has to.
She never does get the story out of him, but she follows the Impala through Memphis without complaint.
It feels surreal, like they’re on some road trip, like she’s not a demon tricking him into kick-starting the apocalypse.
“See the USA in your Chevrolet!” The jingle runs through her head, cheery and annoying. She’s not even the one driving the damn Chevy. Sam laughs when he hears her humming it, and for the first time since Dean died, it’s a genuine laugh.
She throws a French fry at him, regrets it when she realizes she only has two left.
He’s almost gentle with her that night, hands something like reverent on her skin. It’s like being in somebody else’s life.
The thought hits her like a sucker punch, and she slips away after Sam falls asleep. She heads out to a crossroads, stands there remembering a demon with red eyes, and the fact that she’s got nothing left to sell.
It doesn’t help.
-
She’s losing her edge, wearing down like a knife too long neglected. It’s Sam, she knows. He’s changing her, even as she’s supposed to be changing him.
And she’s running out of time. Word is that Dean’s about to break, and Lilith wants Sam as far along as she can get him by then.
The body she’s in is warm and soft, and hers. She has to loosen her grip a little, let her heart stop beating to remember that even though she’s alone, she’s still an intruder.
She’ll never be human.
So she forces down her all too human disgust, and slices her arm one night as they lie in bed, trying to ignore the sticky mess between her thighs, evidence of her weakness.
“No. No fucking way.”
She almost wants that to be the end of it, but she has a job to do.
“Fine,” she says, watching rivulets of blood run down the pale skin of her arm. “You wanna ruin your only shot at becoming powerful enough to toast Lilith? Go ahead.”
He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her, silent. She waits, and tries not to breathe in the scent of her blood, still rich with iron and demon taint. It fills the room, and she has to work not to gag.
When he turns to face her, his eyes are hard, but his mouth is set in a determined line.
“This is the only way?”
“The only way, Sam.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
He lowers his mouth to her arm, and even as his lips against her skin sends a wave of warmth through her, she tries not to choke on something that might be guilt.
-
She can feel her blood in Sam when he uses his powers. It’s like a tiny piece of her is fueling a storm, the spark of electricity that becomes a bolt of lightning.
She gasps the first time it happens, a current of power running through her like a livewire. Sam gives her a funny look but continues with the exorcism. He pulls the demon in ten seconds flat, sends it screaming back to the pit, and even though she’s the one who’s been nursing it, she’s floored by his power.
He turns to her with a satisfied smile, and she should have some snappy remark, “I don’t know if that was eight seconds, cowboy,” but all she can do is think that he’s almost ready.
All that’s left to do now is wait for Dean to break the first seal.
As she shudders with the last vestiges of his power, she wonders how much time she has left. She’s really not all that surprised to find herself wanting more time than she’s got.
The kicker is that she’s not sure if she wants to go through with any of this anymore.
-
A month slips through her fingers, and then Dean is knocking on the door of their hotel room, panic pooling in her gut.
Sam pretends that she’s some random hookup.
“Sure thing, Cathy.”
It doesn’t take much in the way of acting to orchestrate her escape.
“Christie.”
The hurt is real. It doesn’t matter that she knows it was the smart play, the soft, human part of her hurts. That’s what really pisses her off about the whole thing - it shouldn’t fucking matter, but it does.
She’s a demon. It shouldn’t matter.
She slams the door of the Mustang, vinyl cold against her skin, ready to put Pontiac behind her. She drives until she hits the city limits, waits at a light until it cycles from green to red and back again, cars honking angrily behind her.
Johnny Mac’s diner is two miles from the Astoria, a greasy spoon that’s also the hangout for local demons. She heads there, and doesn’t wait for Sam. Her knife takes care of the first three. The other two run before she can finish them off, but it doesn’t matter.
They’ll be back, looking to finish off Hell’s favorite traitor.
It’s a name she doesn’t know what to make of anymore, so she sits down and pours herself a cup of coffee that she doesn’t drink, and waits for Sam.
-
Alistair’s knife slices through her skin like tissue paper, tracing an intricate pattern of agony across her body. The pain is worse than it’s ever been before, the torture somehow more awful in a vacant body. She arches against her restraints, and screams.
He just laughs his calm, cruel laugh and keeps carving.
Her vision blacks out, spots dancing in front of her eyes, and she gropes desperately for something, anything to shut out Alistair and his knife.
Sam.
She thinks of Sam, of the look on his face the last time she saw him. There was trust there, hard-won and fragile. She can’t lose that. Not yet.
Not yet.
‘Godzilla and Mothra. Godzilla and Mothra. Godzilla and Mothra.’
Mantra running through her head, she shuts her eyes and hopes with every fiber of her being that her plan will work.
-
Anna Milton vanishes in a burst of light, Dean fumbles through an apology, and Sam looks at her with something strange in his eyes.
She’d count it as a win, but it feels like a hollow victory, drawing her one step closer to an end where she’ll lose everything she’s just spent six months building.
The motel bed she’s crashed in is old, springs creaking with every shift in her weight. She stares at the water stains on the ceiling and wonders when the hell it all got so complicated.
The ceiling has no answers for her.
-
She lets the wounds Alistair carved into her flesh scar. They remind her that she’s survived, remind her that if she were human, she would have died.
It’s a last ditch attempt to prove to herself that she’s doing the right thing, playing the double agent. She’s not human. Why should she throw away six hundred years of suffering for a race that seems intent on screwing itself over?
‘Because,’ a part of her says, ‘you like it here. You like the open road and the sound of rain hitting the roof. You like French fries and the feel of Sam’s hands on your skin. You like the Mustang and the smell of clean sheets. You don’t want to give this up.’
It’s the truth.
But in the distorted reflection in the glass next to the bed, she can see her eyes turn black. Her heart still stops beating when she loosens her grip on her recycled body, and she can’t bring herself to change anything.
She started down this road a long, long time ago. It’s too late to turn back now.
-
After the panic room, Sam’s a wreck. He’s jonesing for another hit of blood so badly that he’s shaking. His mouth is frantic against the broken skin of her arm, and she can’t help but throw her head back at the sensation when he slips one hand down between her legs, long fingers sliding in and out of her as he suckles her blood.
It’s wrong. She’s worse than a crack dealer - this is going to destroy him, rip apart his life, tear him away from the only family he’s got left. It’s going to end the whole fucking world, and she’s too selfish to stop, greedy for every little bit of Sam she can get.
She’s leading him like a lamb to the slaughter, and when he collapses next to her, his fingers stroking lazy circles on the scarred skin of her stomach, she’s never felt more like an executioner.
They’ve already made plans for the nurse, the final stage of the trap.
Ruby hates herself for it.
-
It’s all happening too fast, the miles ticking over like they’ve got somewhere better to be. Three hours of driving, and they’re at the convent.
The doors creak open with a groan, the harsh sound of metal grating on metal. It rings in her ears, too loud and too real.
She shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t- she doesn’t want this.
Her fingers snag his jacket, canvas rough against the delicate skin of her knuckles.
“Sam,” she starts, but there’s Lilith, stepping out from behind the altar.
She doesn’t want this. Too bad it’s already started.
-
Somehow, Dean’s there. He’s pounding on the doors like he’ll beat them down if he has to, but Lilith’s got them locked tight. She pries at them with her own power, but she’s so outclassed it isn’t even funny.
She can feel Sam’s power spooling up, a storm gathering in a confined space, air charged and waiting to explode.
“Sam!” she yells, and Dean’s voice echoes hers, muffled from behind the doors. He doesn’t seem to hear either of them, his hand outstretched before him.
Lilith laughs, and his power surges, hitting her like a tidal wave.
It feels like the world is collapsing around her, her two lives crashing together, nuclear fusion for the beginning of the end of the world.
“Stop, Sam!”
He turns then, and his eyes are a familiar, inhuman black.
Dean is still pounding on the door and Lilith is still laughing and Sam’s hand is outstretched, ramping up for the final shot, and Ruby does something stupid and insane and incredibly human.
She throws herself in front of Sam, power slamming into her like a freight train. It feels like she’s unraveling, the core of her being coming undone at Sam’s command. It isn’t like an exorcism, the tug and pull of Latin hauling her down to the pit. It’s like the death knell of a supernova, her soul being yanked from her body at light speed, hurling away into nothing.
Her vision whites out, and she can’t feel anything anymore, not even the electric current of Sam’s power-
Then it all stops, and she falls to her knees, gasping for breath like she’s been drowning. Or dying.
“What the hell are you doing?” Sam’s voice, outraged and fucking scared. “I could have killed you!”
“Yes Ruby,” Lilith says, voice cracking against her like a whip. “What are you doing?”
Sam is crouched down beside her like he can protect her. He’ll want to kill her himself when this is all said and done, but that doesn’t matter.
Not anymore.
She drags in one last breath and tries to stand. She finds that she can’t and settles for looking up at Lilith through the dark curtain of her hair.
“It’s over. I choose him.”
Lilith’s face tightens with rage, and her control slips, just for an instant. That’s all Dean needs, bursting through the doors, yelling for Sam to stop.
He pulls up short when he sees that his brother is not in fact ganking the final seal. It only throws him for a minute though, and then he’s wrenching Sam away from her.
“It’s a trap, Sam. You can’t kill her. They lied to you. Lilith is the final seal.”
“What? No. No no no no.” His eyes swing to her, wild and little desperate.
The words taste like ash in her mouth, but she says them anyway. “And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal.”
He stares her, uncomprehending.
“It’s true, Sam. I was supposed to have you kill Lilith, to bust Lucifer out of his cage.”
The past year of her life collapses like a house of cards at the look on his face, and she’s halfway convinced he might just kill her on the spot.
He doesn’t, just looks at her like he doesn’t know her, and then turns slowly back to Dean.
“Okay,” he says brokenly. “I believe you.”
Lilith’s lips curl back in a snarl. “So that’s it, Sam? You turned yourself into a monster and now you’re not going to bite?”
He doesn’t say anything, just lifts his hand. The motion has both Ruby and Dean making a grab for him. Sam shrugs them both off, hard enough to send Dean stumbling backwards and Ruby sprawling on the floor. She feels the growing swell of his power, the storm starting up all over again.
“No, Sam, you can’t do this!” Her voice sounds desperate even to her own ears. “Sam-”
She stops as a column of black smoke erupts from Lilith’s host, a shrieking scream echoing through the convent. Lilith circles, an angry, writhing mass of darkness, then sinks into the floor.
An exorcism.
Sam exorcised Lilith.
It’s over, she thinks wearily, collapsed on the stone floor of an abandoned convent with the brothers who were supposed to be the alpha and omega of the apocalypse.
It’s over.
-Sam can’t even look at her. She talks to the broad expanse of his back instead.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t - I don’t have any excuses. Go ahead and kill me if you want to. You shot your payload on the boss, but Dean’s got the knife. You can end it right now. No one will blame you.”
She runs out of words then, too fucking tired to try and tell him what he’s done to her. She’s not a demon anymore, not really. She wants to try being human with him, but she’s pretty damn sure that’s a pipe dream.
She’s going to die here, gutted like a fish with her own knife. Why waste her breath? It’s stupid, but she’s still got some pride in her.
It always was her greatest sin.
The tension between Sam and Dean is so thick and angry she can feel it from the other side of the room. They argue in harsh whispers, and she can only make out snatches of what’s being said.
“…should gank the bitch right now!”
Her knife looks sharp and vicious in Dean’s hand, and she wonders if it will feel worse than what Alistair did to her.
In the end, Sam says something she can’t quite hear to Dean, and walks away, shoulders rigid and his hands curled into fists.
Dean swears at Sam’s retreating back and walks over to her, a frown etched on his face.
“I don’t like this,” he bites out, lip curling in disgust as he looks at her. “This whole mess? It’s on you. But you stopped him. You stopped him when I couldn’t. I wish you’d never crawled out of the pit in the first place,” he snarls, “but we owe you. And fuck it all if that doesn’t mean something.”
She can’t walk on her own, can barely stand. She gets the feeling that Dean would be all too happy to watch her stumble towards the car, but at the rate she’s going they’ll be here until morning. So he grips her arm like a vice and helps her into the backseat of the Mustang, dumping his jacket over her when she starts shivering and can’t stop.
Cursing under his breath, he slams the door and heads to the Impala. Sam pulls out after his brother, his fingers in a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
The drive until they hit Cleveland, and the only sound to be heard is the rumble of the engine as the miles tick by.
-
The apocalypse that wasn’t sends shockwaves through Heaven and Hell, which the Winchesters promptly ignore.
They go to ground, holed up in a nasty little motel in Detroit. Dean paints sigils she’s never seen before - Enochian, he says - on the walls, and Sam lines the room with salt, the poor man’s version of a safe house.
Ruby just curls up on the bed that’s not covered with their gear, still shaking from her almost-death, and stays out of the way. She’d leave, but she’s got nowhere else to go. Hell will never take her back, and Heaven, well, that was never an option in the first place. The Winchesters are a dangerous unknown, but they’re better than the alternatives.
Absently, she traces the fading scars on her hand, the last remnants of Alistair’s artistry, and wonders what will happen. The motion draws Sam’s gaze, heavy with an emotion she can’t name.
“Why?”
He sounds lost, broken. Searching for answers in a world that no longer makes sense. Didn’t his daddy ever tell him demons always lie?
Because you make me feel human. It was always you, Sam.
Dean walks back in with a bag of food from the greasy spoon diner down the street and pretends to ignore the tension sitting thick and heavy in the room. She takes the box of fries he hands her and pops a few in her mouth. They’re perfect, hot and salty on her tongue.
Deep-fried crack.
“I like French fries too much.”
Sprawled on the other bed, Dean snorts at her answer and tells his brother to stop thinking too hard and eat his damn food.
It’s not the answer Sam wants to hear, not the answer she wants to give, but it can wait. They finish their food in silence, the TV tuned to an eighties action movie marathon, complete with bad hair and overdone explosions.
None of them sleep that night.
-
They stay in Detroit for a week, and from what she knows about Lucifer’s Big Plan that is some potent irony right there. It’s enough to make her laugh.
The arch of Dean’s eyebrow clearly says, ‘the fuck are you laughing about, hellbitch?’
Sam is harder to read, but she knows him better than she knows herself at this point. He’s looking at her like she’s a puzzle he can’t figure out, a monster he doesn’t know how to face.
That just makes her laugh harder. It rolls out of her uncontrollably, the giddy reaction of a survivor who never thought they’d make it. She’s alive. Sam’s alive. The world isn’t ending.
She keeps laughing until her sides are aching and her breath comes in short, hiccupping gasps. The brothers are both staring at her like she’s lost it, and maybe she has.
“We’re alive,” she says when she can breathe again, like that explains it all.
“We’re alive.”
-They roll into South Dakota after a fifteen-hour haul. Bobby calls them idjits and then hugs them both, long and hard. She hangs back, watching from by the cars as Dean explains why they have a demon in tow.
“Dammit, boys!”
“Bobby-”
“Oh, shut up and get in the house.”
Dean complies, shoving Sam in ahead of him. It’s just she and Bobby then, staring at each other across yard. For a moment, it’s like some kind of fucked up Mexican standoff, but then he motions her over and the feeling passes.
Her boots crunch on the gravel as she walks over, and Bobby looks like he wants to douse her with holy water. She’s not going to be drinking anything he offers her, that’s for damn sure.
“I don’t like this neither,” he says slowly, and she winces just a little at the heartland drawl. “You turned Sam into a damn junkie - and if you hadn’t stopped him in the end, I’d gut you with your own knife.” He pauses then, and fixes her with a hard look. “I still might. But Dean’s right. We owe you, and that means somethin’.”
He breaks the salt line for her, points out the Devil’s Traps. She’s pretty sure there’s one or two he doesn’t mention, but she doesn’t hold it against him. She’d probably do the same thing herself, in his situation.
She sinks down onto the musty old couch, fingers a stray thread, and watches Sam, cleaning guns at the kitchen table. He’s already worked over the Smith & Wesson in his hand three times.
He watches her watching him, silence stretching out between them. They jump like startled rabbits when the stairs creak under Dean’s feet. He takes one look at them, lets out a low whistle, and heads right back upstairs.
She rolls her eyes at his retreating form, and turns back to Sam. He’s dropped the gun, all his attention focused on her.
“Why?” he asks again, and he sounds no less lost than he did the first time.
His voice sparks something in her, something other than the numb shock and strange euphoria that’s settled over her since the world didn’t end.
“Well gee, Sam,” she snaps, “I think maybe I just threw away everything I’ve ever worked for on a whim.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He’s angry now too, rising from the chair and stalking toward her.
“I don’t know Sam, you tell me. You tell me, because it sure as hell doesn’t mean that I fucking fell in love with you.”
The words tumble out of her mouth in a rush, a mess of syllables and too much sarcasm. She wants to take them back, but they hang heavy in the air, filling the sliver of space between she and Sam.
“Just answer my goddamned question, Ruby.”
And people call Sam the smart one.
She moves before she has time to think it through, grabbing his hand and pressing it to the spot above her heart. He tries to pull away, but physically he’s no match for her inhuman strength.
“Feel that, Sam?” Her heart beats beneath his palm, quickening at his touch. “That’s why I gave it all up. For you.”
He stares at her, and she plows on before she can start second-guessing herself.
“You make me feel human, Sam. I gave it all up because I wasn’t willing to lose that. I’m still not.”
They stand close like that for a long moment, her words sinking in.
“Okay,” he says finally, “okay.”
-
It’s a start.
Sam’s got a demon blood habit to kick, he and Dean still haven’t figured out how to put things back together between them, and oh yes, they have the combined armies of Heaven and Hell out for their blood.
In the end, though, none of that matters.
They put South Dakota in the rearview mirror after a month at Bobby’s, headed for Louisiana. Revenant sightings in New Orleans, Dean said.
Sam rides with Dean in the Impala. That’s okay, though. She follows in the Mustang, window down and hair blowing in a wild tangle around her face.
The world is still spinning, open roads and rain and French fries and Sam. Her body is warm and soft, and it feels like hers. It feels natural, easy as breathing. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t need to breathe. She can, so she will.
A storm opens up over them as they roll through Kansas, still just wheat fields and open roads. The air tastes like ozone on her tongue, and Ruby can’t quite control the curve of her lips as they drive through the storm.
She keeps the window open.
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