The Wasteland Part I: I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing
Title: The Wasteland Part I: I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing
Author: The Mad Tea Girl
Series: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Ruby
Rating/Warning: PG-13
Summary: Set between the events of Season 5 episode 2 and the end of episode 4. Ruby (the *ORIGINAL* Ruby) climbs out of hell to find Sam, after Sam and Dean have parted ways at the end of episode 2.
Author's Notes: First off, thanks to the amazing Suchaprince for being my AMAZING beta. Now, that aside for me Ruby as protrayed by Katie Cassidey in Season Three, and Geneivieve Cortese in Season Four were not the same person. So I write as if Katie!Ruby is Ruby, and Gen was someone else all together.
I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing
**
“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing”
- “The Wasteland: 1. The burial of the dead” by T.S. Eliot
**
Coming back to earth this time may have been one of the most exhausting and excruciating experiences she had ever endured. She had no way of knowing how long she had spent fighting her way through the levels of Hell to escape; days, months, or years? she couldn’t tell.
But, as she floated incorporeally, there were two things of which she had been completely certain.
One, that something on Earth had changed, and drastically in her absence.
And two, she was going to have one Hell of a time getting her old body back.
*
It wasn’t that she couldn’t get a new body, she could, and easily. And, most people, or demons rather, in her situation would have been more likely to just jump into the nearest human. The truth was she had liked that body, really liked it. It was thin and pretty, and she had always wanted to be a blond in her human life. That and she took the approach to bodies that many human women took to men, when you found a good one you held onto it for all you were worth.
When she finally found it, it was buried in a lackluster cemetery under a headstone that labeled it as “Jane Doe”. Under six feet of dirt, and pumped full of formaldehyde. Despite the preservatives riddling it, it was beginning to decay even if ever so slightly. All the same she slipped inside her old shell, mending and pushing the chemicals out of it, until it was shiny and new again. She’d never had to dig her way out of a grave before, strength and power didn’t change the fact that she emerged disgusting, dirty, and wearing a cheap K-mart Sunday dress.
She would have laughed if the whole thing weren’t so pathetically tragic.
*
Cleaned up and in a stolen pair of clothes she walked out into the harsh early morning sunlight. A man washing his car looked up at her with a mixture of questioning and appraisal. She smiled winningly and inclined her head towards the car.
“She’s a beauty, what year?” It was good to ease into conversations with humans, they could be ever so skittish.
“She’s a sixty four.” He told her, nearly inflating with pride, and she bobbed her head approvingly.
“Falcon right? V-8 engine?” Check, and check, and she could tell from his simple grin that she’d won him over. Really, men could be so simple, talk shop and they think the world of you.
So she concentrated, pushing small waves of power and suggestion towards him, feeling them wrap around him. “It’s an amazing car.” She said slowly as she watched his eyes glaze over with her influence “Can I have it?”
“Sure thing.” He said amiably as he handed her the keys. In the centuries that she had been around humans really hadn’t changed so very much.
*
It took weeks of driving, nearly every location spell in her arsenal, as well as torturing a lesser demon on the outskirts of Arkansas before she pulled up outside the motel in Garber, Oklahoma.
It was 4:30 in the morning, and every light was off, but she found her way to his room well enough, the doorknob unlocking pleasantly under her finger tips as she swept inside. He was asleep, and so she settled into a chair by his bed.
The squeak of leather and springs under her weight caused him to stir and stare blearily at her.
“Hey baby,” She said with a cat-like grin. “You know you didn’t have to end the world just because you missed me, I’d have been happy with just flowers.”
A horrified sort of recognition dawned in his eyes and he bolted out of bed.
“Lucifer!” She frowned.
“Now you’re just being over dramatic.”
“Wait … why do you look like Ruby’s old form…?” She groaned loudly at that.
“Honestly Sam, I credited you with a lot more brains then this. I’m NOT Lucifer.”
“Well you can’t be Ruby”
“Oh really? And why is that?”
“Because Dean killed Ruby. I watched him kill her.”
“No Sam, your brother killed a loud mouthed Lucifer groupie that had been using my name to get to you. You were had sweetheart, and from what I’ve heard, in more ways than one.”
Sam sat down on the bed hard, eyes wide with disbelief.
“But then… where have you been?”
“Hell.” She said shortly as she absently toyed with a pen monogrammed with the motel’s name.
“Hell?” Sam snorted incredulously. “Sorry if I seem a bit skeptical, but my brother was in Hell, and he’s been back for almost a year.”
“Well pumpkin, first of all, I didn’t have angel to yank me out. And second of all, when Lilith sent me to Hell she put me in a lot deeper then Dean was. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but I was hanging out with the nice folks who were getting frozen in lakes and whipped by lizards.”
“Okay, so let’s say that you are Ruby. Let’s say I believe you about that, why are you here?”
She titled her head at Sam and regarded him for a moment.
“Believe it or not Sam, I came back for you.” He looked down at his hands, fingers splayed across his knees.
“But I ruined everything, I let him out, I started the apocalypse, my own brother can’t stand to be around me, and I can’t even blame him.” Ruby seated herself next to him on the bed, her hand absently straying to his hair.
“Look Sam, you thought you were doing the right thing. You got a little lost along the way, but it’s not like you’re the first person to get tricked into something. Everyone thought Lilith was supposed to be killed, your brother didn’t even know until about three seconds before you iced the bitch that she was the last seal.” Sam caught her hand and peered at her.
“But why would you come back just for me.” She sighed.
“I was willing to get annihilated to get you and your idiot brother out of that demon pit in Colorado, and you’re asking me this. Figure it out shortbus.” He frowned, he always frowned. “And all right, so you started the apocalypse, that doesn’t mean you can’t stop it. And I’m willing to help you. I’ve got some reliable sources and a guy with a sandwich board whose been saying the world was going to end for years now. So what do you say?”
Sam dropped Ruby’s hand and got off the bed again, running a hand through his hair nervously.
“It won’t work. I can’t do it Ruby, besides, I gave up hunting, I don’t trust myself.”
“Why? Because of the blood thing? I hate to tell you this honey, but I’ll brain you if you try to drink my blood. And if you think I clawed my way out of Hell just so that I could sit with you while the world falls down around our ears you are dead wrong Sam. So stop moping, there’s a demon nest near the border of Kansas with close links to Lucifer that we’re going to tomorrow. So get some sleep.” She said heading towards the door, she paused in the frame. “By the way, this wasn’t a request, I’ll carry you if I have to. And we’re taking my car, I won’t be caught dead in that off white sedan nightmare you’ve been driving.”
*
There were things that Sam noticed almost immediately. One being that he should have realized that the dark haired girl he spent close to a year with was nothing like the blond he now travelled with.
She was different and all at once familiar. She still stole his fries whenever they ate out, she had a brashness in the way she talked, and when they fought together, she never needed to be backed up, but there was also a sensitivity about her. A sort of softness in the way she dealt with him, when all hunting and saving the world was set aside.
Without him asking she always got them rooms with separate beds, when met with a quizzical stare from the proprietors she would don a charming southern accent and expound about how they were waiting until marriage, and how her daddy would just kill the both of them if they didn’t.
When he talked about his father, about Jess, about Dean, about the year with the girl who used and tricked him, Ruby sat on her bed quiet, listening, without judgment.
When he one day realized that he had become emotionally closer with this demon then he had ever been with another human being, it only served to make him feel even further alienated than before.
*
They entered the motel room a pair of walking bruises, covered in blood and dirt. Sam sank onto his bed as Ruby exhaled deeply and leaned back against the closed door.
The silence in the room was only punctured by the wheeze of the air conditioning unit.
“We almost died back there.” Sam said after some length, eyes locked on the floor. Ruby attempted to run a hand through her hair, catching it in matted blood and dirt, she stopped with a frown.
“I wasn’t going to let them kill you. Don’t be an idiot.” She told him without any real malice.
“And what about you, Ruby? They had weapons that would kill a demon too you know.”
“Sorry Sam, you’re stuck with me.”
“For how long?” He asked darkly, and his tone sent a jolt through her.
“What?”
“Everyone in my life has either died or abandoned me or both. So I’m wondering how long until you do too.” Ruby crossed the room to him and lightly put her hand on his shoulder.
Part of her wanted to tell him that in hundreds and hundreds of years he was the only person she had wanted to stay with. That he was the one thought in her mind as she pulled herself through miles of fire, and brimstone, and torture.
That he made her wish she was normal and human, so that they could be normal and human. That she wanted to go to the movies and dinner with him, instead of killing paranormals like they did.
But she didn’t say any of it. She trailed her fingers from his shoulder up the curve of his neck until they brushed against his cheek, avoiding the scrape there.
“I won’t leave.” She said quietly, maybe even too quietly for him to notice she’d spoken. He didn’t say anything, but he looked up at her with those eyes that made her chest tighten painfully.
So she kissed him. Because it was the best idea she had at the moment to stop the silence and the air of misery in the room. A soft press of lips together and then she meant to pull away, make some flip remark about how that shut him up. But he had twisted his fingers into her hair and he pulled her down hard enough that when their mouths met again in an almost crushing kiss, she could feel her lower lip tear against his teeth and taste the faint metallic tang of blood.
She barely noticed the small sting, because it was Sam kissing her and pulling her down to the mattress, and Sam’s weight that pinned her to the bed as his blunt nails scraped up her torso. And it was Sam who whispered her name over and over and over as he pressed hot, desperate kisses against her face and neck.
Sam who she had crawled out of Hell for, the world could end tomorrow for all she cared because in that moment all there was in the universe was Sam.
*
It was still dark when she woke up. The only light in the room was the pale green glow that Sam’s cell phone cast against his face, as he stood in the corner of the room talking a tone too hushed for her to decipher any words.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows and squinted through the dark at him as he shut off his phone and began picking up his few belongings and packing them into his suitcase.
“Sam…” She said quietly after awhile, and he jumped slightly at the sound of her voice. He half smiled, a sort of sheepish, guilty look as he seated himself on the edge of the bed.
“Umm, that was Dean I was talking to.” He told her, she blew at a stray piece of hair that had fallen across her face and pulled the sheets up around her as she sat up.
“What does he want?” Sam didn’t answer, or meet her eyes.
And the realization of what was happening settled in her stomach like a ton of bricks. “You’re … going back to him.” She said incredulously. “Just like that?”
“Ruby…” Sam said quietly. “He’s my brother.”
“Fine, he’s your brother. That doesn’t change the fact that he turned his back on you. That he left you to fend for yourself while the Apocalypse is happening all around us. But one phone call and you’re going to run back to him?”
“I have to.” He whispered. She felt all at once sick and infuriated, and more than just a little betrayed.
“That’s it then? You were just going to sneak out of here in the middle of the night? Without so much as a ‘gee kid, thanks for the tussle’?” She could hear the weird, strained quality her voice was taking on and she hated it. He stood up, still not looking at her.
“I’m sorry.” Sam told her, as he picked up his bag and headed for the door. Ruby scrambled out of the bed, attempting to tuck the bed sheet around her as she did so.
“Sam, wait!” She all but yelped, grabbing onto his sleeve. “You can’t go.”
“Ruby, I’m really sorry, I am. But Dean’s my brother, this is what I have to do.”
Her hand fell limply at her side.
“But I did everything for you.” He brushed his fingers lightly against her face and she barely felt it.
The door made a faint click as it shut behind him and she stood motionless facing the door, listening to the car start and pull away.
She had given up everything, turned her back on everything she knew, and it hadn’t been enough because Sam would always run back to his brother. She’d known it all along.
The Apocalypse seemed ironically meaningless in the wake of it all.
And she had to laugh because the whole thing was just so tragically pathetic.
* End *
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