Hell hath no fury {Ruby}

[Deleted]

Ruby

Ruby felt a rush of satisfaction as Dean cried out in pain. Although a part of her felt guilty and wanted to stop, another part was glad to be inflicting some sort of pain on Dean. Dean who had never trusted her, Dean who had tried to kill her - and probably would have on more than one occassion if Sam hadn't stepped in.

"Loyalty? To who? Lilith?"

Ruby rolled her eyes.

"No, Tom Cruise," she said. "Who else would I be talking about?"

Truly, Ruby couldn't stand the idea of being loyal to anyone, let alone Lilith. But, for now, no one but her needed to know that.

She balanced the blade on the edge of her finger and concentrated, the knife standing straight up as she focused on it.

"As much fun as I'm having down here with you, I just can't wait to get back up on human soil." She grinned. "Boy, do I have work to do up there."

Most of her taunting was bullshit, or so she thought, since she actually didn't know what it was she'd be doing once she got out. Lilith had said she had an assignment for her, but as far as what it was, Ruby didn't know yet.

But, Dean didn't know that.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

"So after all your bullshit about wanting Lilith dead, you're defecting to her side?" Dean's growl of anger turned into a bitter and humourless laugh.

"I should have known from the start." All along Dean hadn't trusted Ruby, but she'd been so adament about her hate for Lilith that he had allowed himself to accept that was one thing she was telling the truth over. Now it seemed so foolish to believe anything that she had ever said to him. Except perhaps, what she had told him would happen after too many years in Hell. That one day he'd become a demon, just like her.

Since there was a moments reprieve from getting stabbed or slashed while Ruby practiced her knife levitating party tricks, Dean caught his breath and stole a glance, as far as his strained neck would allow, at his blood covered hand. It was throbbing and hot and when he tried to flex his fingers he could barely move them without wincing in pain. Not that he could really have done anything with his hand if he could move his fingers properly, his wrist was secured to the rack so tightly that the rough binds had fused to his flesh with all the blood that had oozed out around the edges from his struggling. Oh, how he would have loved to get his arm free just long enough to grab Ruby's knife and stab her in the face with it.

"You can't get out anyway. The Devil's Gate is closed and the Colt is gone so it can't be opened." Dean would have bet his life on there being other ways out of Hell but since he didn't know what they were and there was a tiny part of him that would always look for the way out of any situation, he figured that any information he could get out of Ruby might prove useful. He was counting on her smug attitude in much the same way James Bond relied on the villains to tell him their diabolical plans right before he escaped and saved the day.

[Deleted]

Ruby

"So after all your bullshit about wanting Lilith dead, you're defecting to her side?"

Dean laughed and Ruby glanced sharply up at him, a scowl on what passed for her face. Her concentration broken, the knife toppled from her finger and fell to the floor with a clatter. Score one for Dean. He rattled her there, saying he should've known.

Ruby did hate Lilith, now more than she ever had before. She wanted that manipulative bitch dead. But it wasn't like she could say that, was it?

She sighed and bent to retrieve the carving knife, spinning it around in her hand before approaching the rack again.

"You can't get out anyway. The Devil's Gate is closed and the Colt is gone so it can't be opened."

Ruby smiled. Good old Dean, always fishing for information. Even when he was being tortured.

"Ohhh, Dean," she muttered. "Always gotta be the negative Nellie, don't you?"

She tilted her head and looked at Dean's bleeding hand as he tried flexing his fingers.

"Man, that must hurt like a bitch, huh?" she said.

Then, like a curious kid sticking a paperclip in an electrical outlet, she used the knife to prod at the hole in Dean's hand she'd created. The blood oozed out of it as she moved the blade around.

"Ooh. That's gonna leave a mark."

As she'd kept her game face on, playing Alastair for the day, the gears in Ruby's brain had been turning. I can help, she'd realized suddenly as she made her way toward Dean with the knife. He'd asked the right question in the right way - asking without really asking. 'You can't get out anyway' meant 'How do I get out of here?' Torturing him further allowed her to play the role she was expected to play, but it also bought her time to think.

"Still just as narrow-minded tied to the Rack as you were up on your own turf," she said, shaking her head.
"After everything you've seen you haven't learned anything, have you?"

Ruby dug further into the wound in Dean's hand with the knife as she continued, hoping he'd be able to pay attention to what she said despite the pain she was inflicting.

"What, you think ever demon that takes someone for a joyride escaped?" She laughed. "If that was the way it worked nothing would ever get done around here."

She pulled the knife out of the wound and wiped the blood off the blade with her fingers.

"Nah. There are other ways out. Especially if you got friends in high places."

She began to walk slowly around to the other side of the rack as she continued talking.

"There are rituals. Powerful ones. The heavy duty, 'sacrifice something cute and fluffy' kind. Those take some heavy ass mojo. But, if there's someone back in the land of the living with that kind of power and determination..."

Without warning she plunged the blade of the knife into his other hand, once again leaving it standing. She shrugged.

"Or, if you think the big man upstairs is on your side, you can pray. See if some asshole with a halo and fluffy white wings comes to your rescue."

She smirked. Her tone was sarcastic, but the information could possibly be helpful if Dean took it seriously. Praying helped the righteous down here. Even if no one ever did come to save him, there was the possibility that praying would give him strength, allow him to hold out a little longer. Once she was out, if he bought himself some time, if he could hang on long enough, maybe she and Sam could bring him back...

She ripped the knife out of his hand as this flimsy, but not impossible plan formed in her mind. She shook the blood off the blade, watching the droplets land on the floor.

"But, the easiest way out is to get sent out," she said. "They give you a job, you smile and nod, and then you go do it. That's how most of us operate."

She cringed inside, calling herself one of 'us'. But she was, wasn't she?

"Me, I made a deal," she said. "Boss lady's got a big job for me to do, and if I do it I'll be free."

She smiled at the thought. Free. There was nothing she wanted more than to be truly free. As long as Lilith was around, though, that would never happen.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

For the brief moment when Ruby lost concentration on the knife in her hands, Dean forgot about how much he hurt, where he was and how screwed up his life (death) had turned out. He forgot because the sweet taste of smugness took hold for those few seconds, the look worn well on his pale and sweaty features as he took pride in knowing he'd unsettled Ruby just enough for her to take a mis-step in the conversation. Her sharp glare said it all.

Just because I'm the guy on the rack, doesn't mean I can't fuck with your mind too bitch.

The blade clattered to ground that Dean couldn't see, making him wonder what foundations Hell had been built on, but the sound was kinda pleasant to hear. At least it made a change from the sound of it scraping against bone or cutting through flesh. It was short lived pleasure however as Ruby picked up the implement of torture and decided that she wanted to try a little vivisection on him for a while.

She started slowly and he was ready to brace himself as the tip of the blade slid under his skin, his jaw clamping shut like a steel trap, teeth clenched to stop the screams of pain from slipping out like the devil's gate held back the demons. It was hard to listen to what she was saying to him when she was wiggling the sharp edges against already brutalised flesh but one word caught his attention and forced him to focus. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the overwhelming sense of Hell all around him and grasped hold of that word.

Escape.

Dean was panting hard now, having held his breath so long in the hopes he could ride out her poking and proding until she got bored and moved onto sticking the knife into another part of his anatomy, but instead she seemed to prefer prolonging the agony in his hand, cutting through the tendons that controlled the movement in his fingers until he was certain that he'd never be able to hold a gun in that hand again should the oppertunity ever come up. Too busy distracted by the unlikeliness of that happening he hadn't realised she'd pulled the knife out and was moving around to his other hand. So it was kind of a surprise when she stabbed through that too.

"Guhh!!! Sonofabitch!!"

Eyes snapped open again going first to the sight of the knife sticking up out of his other palm now, then across to glare daggers of his own at Ruby.

"Or, if you think the big man upstairs is on your side, you can pray. See if some asshole with a halo and fluffy white wings comes to your rescue."

Wait, what...?

There was something in the way she spoke that Dean couldn't quite put his finger on. Not that he had any working fingers right now anyway, but was she serious? She was acting casual, flippant even but her eyes told a different story.

"You're funny." He managed to say, desperately pulling his facade of indifference to her back into place again. "There's no such thing as angels."

Dean believed that too. He'd never seen one. Never met anyone who'd legitimately seen one. Never read any credible books about people who had seen anything even remotely angelic and he'd scanned through most of Bobby's vast collection. Sam was the guy who had the faith, not Dean. So why on earth should he put any stock in God or whoever coming to rescue him from Hell? Surely if there was a God, then wouldn't he have better things to do than give a crap about Dean Winchester? The guy who voluntarily made the deal to go to Hell in the first place.

If Dean were God, he'd be saying 'you asked for this, dumbass'.

[Deleted]

Ruby

“You’re funny. There’s no such thing as angels.”

If Ruby wasn’t too busy being Miss Team Player, she would’ve sighed, rolled her eyes, and lost her patience.

It’s like talking to a brick wall, she thought.

Even through Dean’s pained indifference, Ruby could tell she’d given him something to think about, could almost see his brain working behind that forced air of smug indifference.

She laughed dryly, wrapping her fingers around the handle of the knife.

“Of all people, you should know better than to say there’s no such thing as anything,” Ruby said.

She yanked the knife out of Dean’s hand, examining the blade. She should have known Dean wouldn’t take anything involving God and angels seriously. If it were Sam down here he might have given her the brush off, but she was pretty sure he’d be praying.

… But if Sam were down here it would be over, wouldn’t it? Lilith would’ve had what she wanted and the most effective weapon anyone had against her would’ve been stuck here getting tortured…

…By her.

Ruby shook the thought from her head, not even wanting to think about that scenario. She didn’t even want to know if she was capable of torturing Sam. Either way, it meant something bad, in her opinion.

“I mean, you’re gonna tell me Lucifer and all us demons are real, but there are no players on the other side of the fence?” Ruby continued, walking around to the other side of the rack and hoping she didn’t look as rattled as she felt.

She smiled sweetly down at him, wiping the blood from the blade.

“You know the story. Lucifer was Daddy’s favorite angel or whatever, then he did something bad and got kicked out of the big Playboy Mansion in the sky.”

Ruby rested one of her palms casually on the edge of the rack, paying no mind to the blood that had pooled there and was dripping onto the floor.

“Where do you think demons even came from? It all started with the angels.”

Ruby rested the tip of the knife on Dean’s chest and made a very shallow cut, a straight line going from the hollow between his collar bones to just below his ribcage. It was barely deeper than a papercut and very precise, almost surgical.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said with a chuckle. “The most evil son of a bitch in the world started out as something purely good. ‘The Good Son’, even.” She smiled, her words having a definite double meaning. “Funny how the world works, isn’t it?”

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

"That's freakin' hilarious." Dean sniped back bitterly, confused by Ruby's suddenly more gentle approach. Not that getting sliced down his chest was particularly gentle, but compared to how things had been going, it was more like getting tickled with a very sharp feather. He tried to ball his hands into fists but found that now neither one was really listening to what his brain told them to do. They'd just respond by throbbing and sending spasms of pain rolling up his arms in protest instead.

"If there's any players on the other side of the fence..." he paused to catch his breath, chest heaving despite his desire to remain calm and in control, "...they're on permanent time-out."

Dean believed in what he could see was real, which in his line of work had often been crazy and surreal and almost always horrific and disturbing, but angels or anything even remotely resembling holy beings were a long way from even entering his imagination.

"Next you'll be telling me unicorns are real." He chuckled to himself, the sound empty and hollow, regretting it almost immediately when the split skin on his chest pulled with the action.

[Deleted]

Ruby

Ruby smirked at Dean’s remarks. She hadn’t expected him to believe a word she said, even though on some level she was trying to help him. But, if he chose not to listen, not to believe, that was his problem.

At least she tried.

“Hey, I didn’t say they were active,” Ruby said, twirling the knife around in her hand, Dean’s blood dripping on his face. “Takes a lot to get their attention.”

Ruby studied the small incision she’d made along Dean’s chest, surprised at how neat and clean it was. She wasn’t typically the surgical type.

I guess you really can do anything you put your mind to… she thought.

As Ruby continued to speak, she slowly traced the incision she’d already made with the tip of the knife, making the wound a little deeper. Blood oozed out of it and dripped down Dean’s sides.

“Who knows? Maybe if you pray hard enough, they’ll help you,” she said.

Then she laughed.

“But, like you said, it’s not like they’re paying any attention anyway, right?”

She wiggled the blade around a little as she cut, ruining the precision of the wound.

“But maybe you’ll get lucky, and Alastair’ll offer you a deal.”

She shrugged.

“It’s rare, but it happens.”

Alastair was certainly not known for mercy or for sympathy. He was cold and heartless. It was what made him perfect for this job. Not many people – demons or not – could torture other people all day every day for eternity. It took something special to be able to do that without feeling some sort of remorse.

At one point, Ruby had thought she had that something special.

But she’d never even come close.

Ruby paused in her little game of slice and dice and looked Dean in the eye, leaning a bit closer and dropping her voice.

“But if for some bizarre reason he does offer you a deal, it’d probably be smart to take it,” she said. “It might be the only way you’ll find any peace at all in this place.”

It was an unlikely scenario, she knew. But the angel theory was even less likely. Regardless of what she’d heard, Dean was right. Angels weren’t key players in anything that happened on Earth. They never really had been. They’d always been content to sit on the sidelines and take orders. The probability of anyone up there even listening to Dean’s prayers was slim, never mind anyone even making any move to help him.

Taking a deal from Alastair would no doubt have consequences. Deals with demons – or anyone – always did. But, logically, it was the best hope Dean had of ever getting off the rack.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

It usually happened sooner or later but this time, the taste of blood at the back of his throat came sooner than Dean had hoped. Alastair was much more deft at torturing without compromising Dean's ability to talk back, mostly because he liked to listen to him run his mouth. He enjoyed all the creative cursing a Winchester could produce when in pain. Ruby however, hadn't quite got that delicate balance right, which was when she started carving deeper into his chest, all the internal bleeding from that wound and the deep one in his stomach began working its way up his throat and into his mouth, cutting off any bitter comebacks with a choking, gasping cough instead.

He loathed being at the mercy of his body, always hated how easily it could break under just a little pressure and now, twisting his head to the side to let the blood run from the corner of his mouth, it felt even more humilating to seem so fragile and weak. The hacking coughs didn't do him any favours either, causing the tip of the blade that Ruby still had buried in his chest to scrape and drag against the bones of his ribcage. The sensation made him groan, the sound deep and wet as it emerged from his lips with a splatter of crimson. Blood coated his teeth and lips, stained his cheeks where it had over flown leaving rivulets meandering down behind his ears where it mingled with the rest of the blood that had been shed onto the rack he was strapped to.

Despite the agony and the distracting lack of air getting into his system, Dean was determind to make it clear that he was done making deals with demons.

"Never take it...." He gasped, mustering all his strength to make himself sound convincing.

"Al...lastair's deal...I'll never..." Yet more coughing, more blood lost under Ruby's impromptu surgery. The very idea of finding peace in Hell was about as likely as Ruby becoming a nun. Even if Dean knew for certain that taking any deal that Alastair offered would give him peace, what would be the price of it?

[Deleted]

Ruby

Ruby frowned slightly as Dean began coughing up blood. Alastair would've been more careful, drawn out the torture for much longer than this.

But she was not Alastair.

A part of her was relieved. This meant it would be over soon. For both of them. She wouldn't have to cut into him for much longer. He wouldn't be hurting for much longer.

It'll all be over soon, she thought. It'll be over soon and you'll be free...

But then, what if Lilith wasn't pleased? What if it hadn't taken long enough? Then what would happen to her? Would all this have been for nothing?

"Never take it..."

Ruby looked over at him sharply, torn from her thoughts. When she spoke, she almost sounded startled. Breaking character in her surprise.

"What?"

"Al...lastair's deal...I'll never..."

Dean started coughing violently again and it made Ruby think of what they used to call Consumption. People's lungs wound just break down and stop working. But it wasn't quick - it wasn't clean. It was a lot like this...

But Ruby put her guilt on the back burner for the moment, concentrating instead on what Dean had said. When she spoke her voice was trembling, but quiet.

"You'll never... You mean... He's offered it to you? The deal?"

Ruby was leaning over the rack now, leaning closer to Dean to hear what he said - whispy chunks of what had at one time been long red hair hanging down from her charred scalp. There was only one deal Alastair ever offered a human soul. 'Take up the carving, and you get off the rack.'

And there was a reason for this.

He was searching for the right man. A very particular type of person. A righteous man.

Like John Winchester.

Suddenly Ruby understood. There was a reason Lilith had given Dean such a short timespan to go with the deal he made. There was probably even a reason Sam was the way he was. She wasn't sure of all the details - no one told her much anymore. But a righteous man shedding blood in Hell would mean one thing, ultimately.

The rise of Lucifer.

Ruby didn't notice it, but her hands were shaking as she waited for Dean to spit out more information.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

Why was Ruby so surprised that Dean had already been offered a deal down here? Surely it wasn't that uncommon to have a demon try and lure a soul even further into the darkness once they were already a resident of the pit. He thought that was the whole point, how they destroyed the soul and turned someone into a demon. How else would it work?

Ruby had told him already that every demon was once a human and that it was Hell that changed them, it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to the inky blackness. The big question was, how long could Dean keep saying no to Alastair for? The only thing stopping him from giving up, from becoming what he truely feared he would, was thoughts of Sam. What would happen if, God forbid, he ever began to forget what Sam looked like? Or how Sam sounded, his voice in his head? Surely there would come a point when time would overcome memory. Or when pain would overcome sanity and his brother would be lost in the abyss, then all those tiny cracks that he'd been trying to hold together would gradually get bigger and bigger until they were huge, giant fissures that split him right down the centre, leaving him exposed and vulnerable and then saying 'yes' to that deal, that unthinkable offer that Alastair brought up at the end of each and every day would just be far too easy to give into.

She'd leaned over him now, tendrils of barbed and blackened hair scratching against already oversensitive skin and the sight of Ruby's demonic face so close up made him gag. Of course, that could have been the blood in the back of his throat too, but certainly she wasn't helping matters.

"Yeah..." He gargled, sticking to simple one word answers so that he could concentrate on breathing and not choking. Ruby wasn't getting that satisfaction out of him yet.

"Off....rack." He could feel blood, warm and univited, trickling upto his nose now too. "Other...souls on." Once more coughing took hold and when he turned his head to the side, red spilled from his nostrils to accompany that which had already stained his lips and jaw.

[Deleted]

Ruby

It wasn't uncommon for Alastair to offer his tortured souls a deal. Most demons started out human, but their souls were mangled over time in Hell, and they lost whatever humanity they had left. But not all of them were offered Alastair's deal. Some of them were just tortured to the breaking point. After enough pain and dehumanizing, Ruby had seen plenty of people go completely insane down here.

Some people were offered deals, but it wasn't as much of an everyday practice as people tended to think. Alastair's deal was reserved for a certain type of person: strong-willed, determined, moral. Someone who wouldn't break as easily as most people did. She herself had held out longer than one would think under the same circumstances before getting on the other side of the carving knife.

I wonder how long Sam would hold out if he were here...

Ruby forced the thought from her mind. She hoped Sam would never end up here.

Her thoughts snapped back to Dean as he coughed up an answer for her. He'd get off the rack if he put other souls on. Something to that affect. But Ruby didn't need to know what the nature of the deal was. There was only one Alastair ever offered, and she knew it all too well. But how long had Alastair been offering it to him for? Usually he'd try to break a soul the old-fashioned way before he offered them that deal.

As far as Ruby knew, Dean hadn't been here that long, considering. For him she was sure it seemed like a lifetime, but in the long run he'd only been here a short while. If Alastair was offering Dean the deal that quickly, it meant that he was more than strong-willed and moral. He was stronger than that, like his father.

Ruby was too surprised to put all the pieces together at the moment, and her job wasn't finished yet. She struggled to regain her composure, playing the role of the heartless torturer.

"Whatever," she said. "We could swap stories about Hell all day. Anyway, a deal won't help you now. If you're lucky you'll go insane before you get a chance to lose your humanity. The only thing worse than becoming a demon is knowing it's happening, losing a little bit of yourself every day and not being able to do anything to stop it. That's the real torture."

Ruby walked along the rack and made a long gash along Dean's shin. At this point she just wanted to get this over with. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep this up. She hadn't wanted to take the deal way back when she was still a human soul in Hell, and she didn't want to take this deal now if taking up the carving knife was the price.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

"Gahhh!" Dean cried out, eyes squeezed shut and mouth open in a pained grimace when Ruby slashed at his leg. It was all becoming too much, the pain was overwhelming him, too many wounds all screaming out in agony at the same time making it so very difficult to block any of them at all.

He wanted to scream for her to stop, to just leave him alone but what was the point of that? This was Hell, this is how every day went. There was no stopping, no reprieve, no time out to deal with your guts hanging out. Begging for her to stop would be giving in and Dean swore he wasn't going down that road.

Can't quit now....can't....gotta hold on...just remember why you're here...for Sam....

"Nurghh!" He cried out again and again, at the mercy of Ruby and her creative knife skills. Sometimes he was able to anticpate where she'd slash him open next, sometimes she'd just throw a curve ball, but everytime she ripped him open it was just another chip in the wall he was desperately trying to keep from falling apart. In the midst of it all though, between the sound of tearing flesh and the splatter of wet blood, he got the very distinct feeling she wasn't really enjoying what she was doing which, if anything, was spectacularly weird.

It wasn't that she was going easy on him, far be it, but the effort she was putting in...it just seemed like she was going through the motions. Dean knew Ruby, or thought he did. They'd fought plenty of times and when it came to blows, he could sense the anger in her, the desire to cause him harm. It radiated from her like heat, but now she was cold. Distant and uninterested. It confused him and he wondered if that was an effect of spending time in Hell. If her being on earth had humanised her, being around people, around Sam.

"S'm..." He gasped, unaware that the sound of his brother's name had slipped through his lips as he lay there, bleeding and torn open like an autopsy specimen.

[Deleted]

Ruby

Ruby put on her game face as she slashed at Dean. She tried to pretend it was someone else, a stranger, but it didn't make it any easier. Every time he cried out in pain, every time she heard his voice, it reminded her she was slicing into Dean.

She'd stopped speaking for the most part, not because she couldn't think of anything to say - she could think of plenty of psychological torture to throw at him. But, she knew if she spoke her voice would betray the guilt she was feeling.

She didn't want to do this.

"S'm"

Ruby looked up sharply. The name was garbled, disguised as a cry of pain, but it was there. Sam.

"Oh, don't worry about little Sammy," she said quietly. "I promise I'll take good care of him."

She started to make another cut along Dean's thigh, but hesitated. She wondered if she could stop now, if she'd done enough. She could slit the poor bastard's throat, quick and clean, and put him out of his misery.

[ZZZ - Dean - RETIRED]

"Oh, don't worry about little Sammy, I promise I'll take good care of him."

It dawned on Dean, far too late, that he'd let his weakness show again, that he'd cried out for his brother when he was at his most vulnerable and even though he was certain that every evil thing that had ever crossed the path of a Winchester knew that family was the chink in the armour, it still felt like he'd somehow betrayed Sam by screaming out his name under torture. As though that was the reason why he was being torn to shreds down here, because they wanted to know what enemy secrets he had locked in his mind.

Tell us where you've hidden the nuclear warhead and we'll let you go....

It wasn't the first time Dean had let slip Sam's name in pain or desperation down here, the very first day he'd screamed himself hoarse just yelling for him over and over, begging someone to come and save him from this nightmare, so it wasn't really that he was disturbed about. It was the ever so slightly sinister way Ruby said she was 'going to take care of Sam' that sent the chill down his spine. Just another reminder that she was getting out and he wasn't going anywhere. Not unless he took that deal Alastair kept offering him.

"No...." He whispered, squeezing his eyes closed as Ruby sliced into his thigh again. Then almost as suddenly as she started, she stopped. Hesitating just a second too long which Dean assumed was because he'd spoken.

"No!" He said, louder this time, allowing his pain to fuel the anger in his tone. His body might have been giving up, too weak to fight back now that most of his blood was all over the floor, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. Alastair couldn't break him so Ruby wasn't getting the pleasure either.

"NO!" It was practically a war cry, with teeth gritted and lips curled back into a sneer, his eyes suddenly bright again, using the last of his waning energy to fix Ruby with a deadly dangerous look.

"One day....'m gonna kill you." Everything he had left in him was poured into that vow and just before his body began convulsing again, he managed to spit blood in her face. It gave him satisfaction to know she hadn't won yet.

[Deleted]

Ruby

Ruby hadn't even noticed Dean say the word 'no' until he started repeating it over and over, surprising her slightly. She didn't think his vocal cords were up for the challenge.

Good ol' Dean, still fighting the fight, she thought.

As he glared at her she stared back, trying her best to look cold, or at least vaguely indifferent.

"One day....'m gonna kill you."

Ruby twirled the knife around in her fingers as she studied him. He was weak. With all the blood he'd lost, he had to be. But he meant those words and was doing everything in his power to convey them with all the anger and sincerity he felt.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she said. "Guess I better hope you never get out of here, huh?"

She smirked, though she didn't like that she'd just made an enemy she didn't want. But, at least it was almost over. She'd played her part, and after this last step she could leave and try to find Sam before Lilith did.

"Well, then. If you wanna kill me so bad, I guess I should return the favor."

Ruby examined the knife, trying to decide what the quickest way to kill him would be. At least she could put him out of his misery for a short while.

"Bye, Dean. I'd say see you soon, but... I probably won't."

She raised the carving knife high and stabbed him in the heart, throwing all her weight behind the knife to slide it between his ribs and make it a quick, one shot deal. She let out an anguished cry as she did it, angry at what she'd done and angry at Lilith for making her do it. Blood splattered onto her face and she pulled out the knife.

It's done, she thought. You're free. You did it. It's done.

Ruby let the knife slip from her fingers, hearing it drop onto the ground with a clatter as she turned her back, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.