Title: You Fight Me, You Fight My Battles
Author: OpheliacAngel
Pairings: Bela/Ruby
Genres: Romance/Friendship
Rating: Teen
Summary: Her eyes are pitch and Bela will never forget who she is.
A/N: Written for femslashficlets for prompt #049 TV Tropes. This is for the trope 'You Are Not Alone.'
Soundtrack: Lifehouse's 'You and Me'
~What day is it?
And in what month?
This clock never seemed so alive
I can't keep up, and I can't back down
I've been losing so much time~
Ruby's kneeling down on the ground beside her latest kill. There are deep knife wounds marring the girl's tanned skin, but Bela knows the demon that had been inhabiting her had been the source of Ruby's endless well of fury and purpose. Bela's been tracking Ruby's nightly activities for the past week and Ruby still hasn't called her out on it. Now Bela comes out and Ruby glances up at her, tongue lapping up the blood on her fingers.
Her eyes are pitch and Bela will never forget who she is.
The demon who's been hanging around her like a shadow has been hunting down Lilith: something to do with Bela. Okay, everything to do with Bela. And the human knows she should have never told her, what she sold her soul for, especially how many days she has left, but she can't be not vulnerable all the damn time.
Then again, she's been a shadow just as surely as Ruby has, because Bela looks for Ruby when she's gone, usually can find her in the deepest and darkest hole and what does that say about her?
Bela watched the entirety of the… interrogation, the demon pleading for her life, the blood curling like snakes round and round her wrists like stormy sigils, dark liquid seeping into the soil and yanking Bela's senses from merciful sleep. The night around her darkened and Bela already felt the hell hound's claws, the soil filtering down into her shredded mouth.
Can't blame a girl for needing to escape.
"What was that?" Bela screamed, hand tightening around the demon blade in her hand, a gift from Ruby. It's both a warning for Ruby to back off and a threat for if she dares to leave, and Bela knows she can't treat Ruby like this, like an inanimate object rather than a person. The demon could slit her throat in one fell swoop, yet Bela feels something that runs so deep she hates it even more than she needs it.
She doesn't back off because treating someone like a psychological punching bag is what she needs, even more than Ruby's understanding.
Ruby just stares at her. Her eyes do not warn because they are no longer black, and it just makes Bela want to pummel her into the ground. This lifelessness isn't Ruby. Ruby doesn't stare, she acts.
Except she just did all her acting.
There is blood streaming out from underneath Bela's nose and she rubs it away, annoyed. She could take a punch or two, get her to think straight again, even though thinking straight again means that she has less than two weeks left and she's just so damn tired all the time and Ruby knows and leaves her alone because Bela won't get a second chance. Except for the part where she doesn't want to be alone, not really, only feels like she has to protect Ruby from this even though this is Ruby's territory. It sickens Bela but also makes her feel brave too.
Doesn't matter, she's still going down down down down down.
Bela stares down at Ruby's handiwork and she doesn't get it. She should get it because Ruby's gestures are so bloody and loud and no one else gets gestures like that. Bela doesn't really get herself anymore though, so there's that. "I didn't ask you to fight my battles for me!"
"That's the definition of friendship, Bels."
There's a hairline crack in Bela then, enough to make her think she's been cut open and it's that one brief second before blood seeps out, soft and slow and even surer of Bela's imminent demise than Bela herself is. Ruby's tone is so calm and so serious that Bela mistakes her for sounding smug. She shoves Ruby so that her beloved jacket is covered in blood and her blonde hair that resembles a halo gets all muddy and disgusting. She pushes the demon again while she's already down, feels like a bitch for doing it, but this time her high heels twist and turn in the mud until she moves and they refuse to move with her. She falls, the mud and blood splashing up around her and coating her face, and Ruby laughs.
Bela does too, after a minute, stopping her futile attempts to rid herself of the mess she's fallen into.
They look one and the same then: only stray patches of Ruby's blonde hair shine through the mud, and her black eyes could be a mere trick of the moonlight. Bela never forgets that she's human but sometimes it slips her pressure-cooked head that Ruby's a demon and that's dangerous.
Bela has less than two weeks left of danger. Less than two weeks left of the two of them rolling around in the mud like bloody idiots.
She wants to tell Ruby so many things: not to wait around, not to waste time on her, not to torture demons for the slightest rumor of where to find Lilith, to trade for Bela's life. But Ruby knows her inside and out, like she's already seen Bela's insides for herself, sees the resentment and confusion and desperation there, none of which she can give into. Like she hears Bela's screams as she tries to claw her way out of this, to hang onto the world while she still can.
"So what, we're mere friends with benefits now? You feel indebted to me?" Bela knows she should hold her tongue to prevent herself from hearing exactly what she doesn't want to hear, yet her disappointment causes her to lash out.
Ruby grabs the human's ruined hair and yanks her head forward, smashing her lips against Bela's and shoving her tongue down Bela's throat until she's almost choking. Ruby releases Bela before her body instinctively urges her to break away, but Bela grabs a fistful of Ruby's shirt and holds on, tight as she can until Ruby's peppermint scented hair lulls her into a state of detachment.
FIN