[Title and quote from Tori Amos's "Girl." I do not own this song or Supernatural.]
castles are burning in my heart
by lostlikealice/thinkatory
She's been everybody else's girl, maybe one day she'll be her own. - Tori Amos
The Pit makes your mind razor-sharp, like the edge of one of Alistair's toys. Pain stings then it cools then it shatters you into pieces until finally there's only one part of you left. Then and only then you can finally take the pain, hone it, make it a weapon, or a tool, or something to live for.
She doesn't really know when she broke because it's all behind her, pieces scattered to the wind. In the first century in Hell she thinks of nothing else but being thrown to the rack to suffer anything they can muster. It's worth the rush, the nasty little pinpricks she can feel to her core and they burn.
"You are a bastard," she tells Alistair one day as he licks his lips and runs the razor along the curve of her breast.
He snorts. "And you like it, you little whore." In an instant he flicks his razor against her face, blood flies into her eye, and he laughs as she squirms. "Each and every one of you. But of course you do. We did train you stupid little brats for a very long time to understand."
"Understand," she breathes.
Just like that, he tilts her head back and draws the razor up her chin. He smirks down at her as she shudders under his work, and says, "Pain's the point."
"Wordplay, that's cute," she says. She's not listening; she's focused on the pain, so focused, in a trance -
And as the blood drips down her throat, she remembers in a flash: the warmth of a knife clasped lovingly in her hands, the taste of the Latin in her mouth, the thick gush of the blood, that pleasure pulsing through her as her stomach twists, with the taste of death in the back of her throat.
"Nothing to make you feel alive than a bit of pain," Alistair is saying, grinning as he flays the skin from her face with his razor, watches her twist on his rack like he's hung a masterpiece portrait on the wall, and that's when she starts to laugh, the taste of blood in her parched mouth, and the pain is the point, he's right.
The pain is the point, the edge, the handle of every knife. The pain is all there is.
Year of Our Lord 1349 is when it hits Kilkenny and Julia's entire family dies. The bitter cold of January does nothing to fend the pestilence off, and she's ten years old, waiting outside of the boarded-up house where they've been quarantined.
She is more than ready to succumb to the cold because though she's numb and has never, ever seen so many dead, so grotesquely dead and dying, she's just old enough to start to grasp the horror of what's happening. The cold starts to tingle in her skin, and she appreciates the numbness and sleep it brings.
About ten minutes after she lets her eyes fall shut, she hears a man speaking and she doesn't protest when he picks her up and slings her over his shoulder.
Though the friars at the Black Abbey are sick and dying too, they have stone walls and glass windows and crucifixes to keep the plague at bay. They place her in a room far from the scent, fires blazing as hot as they can make them. A rosary and a Bible are given to her, although she can't read, and they promise her that when they get her to the convent in Dublin that she will.
She is not the only one out of place at the friars' masses, though she's the only one there to see all six bodies be carried out. God's men and women, His own chosen, are frightened and dying.
Nothing really moves in Hell but you still feel like you're sinking. Something's changed but she doesn't know what, and she doesn't care, because there's power in her hands again and that just feels right. It's been at least two centuries in Hell and there are souls at her disposal - and she doesn't need a razor. She doesn't need a rack.
It's second nature, the movement of her hands, the words she speaks, and the souls under her loving care (mother, father, child, sister, brother, sinner, saint) are all the same as she twists them until they break - and it's right.
"Look at you go."
She's not used to being interrupted, with the power crackling up her arm, and there's a familiarity in the ritual that she can't make herself break away from, even for a voice that she knows she should turn to. Finally, she does.
Her white eyes are cool, dizzying in their power just at a glance into them, and Ruby's arm falls slack as she realizes. There's no mistaking her. Lilith.
"Do you have a name?"
One name. Too many. She doesn't know. "Ruby," she says. "It's Ruby."
"One of our whores," Lilith muses, appraises her, "but it looks like we paid you in full."
Just having her near, the voice, those eyes, it's more painful and exhilarating than a decade with Alistair. "More than full."
Lilith puts her hand to Ruby's face, her eyes fall shut and there's something soft and sweet against her mouth, and she tastes it, drinks it in.
"That's right, that's right, drink up like a good little girl," she murmurs.
Her hands close around Lilith's wrist and that's when Lilith's other hand goes to her forehead, the bloody wrist yanked from her mouth, and Ruby's eyes snap open, dark as the Pit, her mouth slack and everything in her quivering.
"What..."
She feels forged like a sword, hot, sizzling, newly formed and burning with potential.
Lilith backs away. "I've got plans for you," she says, "but you've got a lot to learn."
Reality sets in but she can't handle it, can't handle the memories flooding back, the strength she's just been fed, what she's become and what it means she's capable of handling now - her mind is mended, and with it scraps of what she'd once been.
You've got a lot to learn.
At the convent in Dublin, they teach her to read with the Bible, a hard enough task for a girl who would have rather cleaned and scrubbed and baked than become a bride of Christ, but made worse by her lack of faith.
"It's by the grace of God you're here at all, Julia," one of the sisters chides her, and clutches at her rosary.
"And by His grace they're all dead too," she says. Her fingers twist in her own rosary, her mouth set as the sisters stare at her, aghast.
One of them finally puts her hand over the girl's. "You must have faith in God's plan."
"You've got so much to learn," the other sister says, and gives her a sad smile before patting the Bible on the table.
It's God or Hell, she knows that. She wants to shatter the rosary, bring her family back, it's been two years and the pestilence has killed so many, but she has been spared. She has survived by a series of miracles, by the grace of God only.
The grief is enough to rip her in two, it's enough that she knows she will never feel whole again, but she has no choice, and the sisters have found some way to smile, as thin and helpless as they seem at the other side of the table.
Julia reads about the sins of Adam and Eve and what they brought upon humanity and it makes her want to retch.
"It's all our fault," she says to no one, half-hysterical, and crosses herself to negate it, in case God above is listening and will choose to kill her next with black boils and the cough that rattled her family's home.
Ruby understands the look in any demon's eye now, the torment, the madness, the absolute hopeless lust of it all, because there is nothing but the pain of constant contradiction to drive you to feel anything else, anything at all, to visit anything on anyone.
She lives two and a half centuries in Hell, given the chance to escape the Pit but she can't imagine why any demon would want to be there with the blood, the sweat, the air they once breathed as anxious, desperate human beings clinging to life with both hands.
No. The souls can be rended here, others can go up and gather them. She wants to make them suffer the way she suffered, the way she suffers now.
Alistair presses a razor into her hands but she denies it. The razor is too simple. Too easy.
The spellwork becomes simpler now that she remembers. Call it a philosophical difference, but Ruby likes to think that their memories and failures from a world not so different from the Pit are a much sharper blade than any of Alistair's razors.
Any soul can be twisted in on itself, suffering at its own hands, at the knowledge.
Oh yes. It was knowledge that made Adam and Eve fall. It's always knowledge, and the answer is always the same. There is no sharper tool.
She feels Lilith lingering at the edge of her work. She doesn't pay the Queen of Hell any mind. Lilith will come to her when she's ready.
Julia owes everything to the sisters, so she works her hands to the bone and walks to town to get what supplies they can't provide themselves. She's given her life up to God; God had the chance to let Death take her, and here she stands.
Her faith has grown, but she remains unmarried to the Church, as devoted to the Church as she was to her father's baking in Kilkenny before the plague struck. Humble, devoted, perhaps, but she mouths the words.
At some point it'll break through. At some point she'll believe what she's repeating along with the others at every Mass, and faith will win out over knowledge against all odds. At some point she'll stop wanting to know why and start accepting that there is no answer at all.
Town is a new adventure each time, finally beginning to recover from the fury of Death's rampage across the countryside. She gathers the sisters' things into the basket she brought along and pulls her hood over her head before she heads to the gate.
"Have a minute for a poor old soul, Sister?" a man calls to her.
She can't help herself, and casts him a glance. He takes that as a cue to approach her. "What is it you need?" she asks, taking pity on him.
Fear floods her as he blinks his eyes seem to change color, but she shakes it off, watching him unwrap a parcel in his arms. "It's more what do you need, Sister. I see the darkness in your soul. The doubt." The dirty linen falls off of the book it's wrapped around. "They haven't got your answers, Julia."
She can't breathe. His dark eyes and words cut deep into her, and threaten to send her into the child's panic and hopelessness of Kilkenny in January, waiting for her family to leave the boarded-up house they died in. "Thank you," she says, "but I've all the answers I need."
She isn't fooling herself; she sure as anything isn't fooling him. "Why'd he do it?" the man asks her.
It's lost on her. "What?"
"Why'd he do it," he repeats, more slowly.
"Why'd who do what?" she asks, startled.
He cradles the book, almost lovingly, as he leans in closer to her. "Why'd God kill you all, when you love 'im so much?"
"God is benevolent. This was all for the best," Julia tells him, but her heart is racing and his eyes are black.
"You don't believe that." His eyes aren't changing. They're black, completely black. "Do you?"
"I do," she whispers, but she knows what this means. The Devil is visiting her with his book. Everyone knows what this means. "I have to go back."
"Not until you have a look inside." Before she can protest, he opens the book, takes her hand and presses her palm against the page. She stares into it, knowing how very wrong it is, but she reads, and he grips her hand still - oh, every part of this is wrong -
His mouth is against her ear. "Read," he breathes.
Her blood is rushing to her face, her body never so close to a man's, the book filled with carefully-penned instructions and knowledge and power, she knows.
But she can't. God is watching. He knows.
Julia yanks her hand away and rushes away as fast as her feet will take her. He doesn't follow, but he doesn't have to. She can feel his eyes on her back all the way to the convent, black as night, just as unknown and dangerous.
"He was content to tell us nothing, to watch us scurry around on the ground like beasts driven by base desires. He could have given us power, but he chose not to. He chose to leave us helpless. And when we finally sought it out, with the right guidance, he took everything away. Everything."
There's nothing on Earth, Heaven or Hell more beautiful than Lilith, or more majestic and royal. Ruby can only sit, transfixed, to watch and listen.
"He saved me, Ruby," Lilith says.
"He..." It doesn't follow.
"He's given us everything." She makes a bitter sound, close to spitting in disgust. "The Lord Above only taketh away. Our Lord - oh, He brought us light, He made us better than animals. He nursed us like a mother and raised us like a father."
"Lucifer," Ruby says aloud, tastes the three syllables, the power in that alone, and the feelings it stirs must be clear on her face, because Lilith smiles, a glorious thing.
"Heaven calls us fallen - they call Him the source of the darkness but that's only because they've never opened their eyes. Too frightened to see, to feel, to know and understand instead of just be told."
It strikes too many chords inside her. She chooses the least threatening one. "He saved you."
Lilith laughs and eyes Ruby until she draws an uncertain smile from her. "One of their first wagers. He knew He could do better. And Heaven won't ever admit it - but He has."
He has. He has to have. For all the prayers she mouthed, for all her childlike faith in nothing and fear of Satan and temptation, there was no reward. Just more death, more wars, more plagues. Centuries of tribulations all from God's abandonment - or worst, a test of faith -
"No way for a father to behave." Ruby stares up at Lilith. "To just walk away and leave his children to fend for themselves."
"Our Father is here." Lilith slices open her wrist almost casually. "You just have to know where to look."
Her blood cries out to the wound and she falls to her knees before Lilith, desperate and hungry before her and all that she provides.
Julia looks out of the bakery's back window carefully, her dress clutched to her bare breasts in a desperate bid at modesty. What should she do, a convent girl, expected to take her vows within a year, now pregnant at the hands of the baker's son?
"Julia," he says, lying on his side in the rough bed they shared mere moments before. "Please, come back."
"I should leave, they'll be expecting me," she says, but returning to the convent in her state is... unthinkable. She pulls on her dress then, before someone sees her undone in this way. "I'll see you next month, Daniel – "
"No," Daniel says firmly, and climbs to his feet to take her hand before she can escape out the door. His grip relaxes and his face softens once she glances back at him in mild fear. "Stay with me."
"And marry you?" she asks sharply. "Must have to, now that you're a father."
That stops him. "You needn't keep the child. There's a woman..."
"I know her," Julia snaps back. "They teach sense at the convent as well."
He catches her hand before she can reach for the doorknob. "I would marry you," he says, nearly gallant.
This is not what she was expecting when she came into town. Color floods her cheeks and she speechlessly stands for a still and silent moment, then she hurries through the door before he can stop her again.
The woman's name is Deirdre and she runs an apothecary from her dead husband's home. More than a few people believe some form of "remedy" is plainly to blame for the husband's death, but no one is so coarse to say so too loudly. Everyone needs a remedy of their own at some point.
The flush still in her cheeks gives her away to Deirdre near instantly. "Right," she says, "got ourselves into some trouble with a man, have we?"
Julia refuses to say the words aloud but she simply nods, and Deirdre moves a pot of water onto the fire. "Tansy tea for you, girl, and we'll put you right."
It's stiflingly awkward as they wait for the water to boil, though the apothecary doesn't seem to notice, until there's a horrible sound and dense black smoke blinds Julia and apparently chokes Deirdre. Then it vanishes, leaving Julia staring wide-eyed at a smiling Deirdre.
"You've never fit in at the convent, girl," Deirdre says, in a low sort of drawl. "You were always meant for something bigger."
"Sorry?" Julia's voice comes out small. Deirdre's eyes are black.
Deirdre extends her hand out slowly, luxuriously, as though Julia is meant to kiss it like a cardinal's ring. "Let's make your little brew and move on from this unpleasantness," she says. "We have so much to talk about."
Her mouth is dry, and she doesn't move. "Are you..."
The apothecary's hand drops. "I told you one day you would read from our book," she says, blithely. "And tonight you will."
Julia is no longer innocent. The tea brewing now is proof enough of that. She's no longer pretending to be a woman of God, and what good would it be to take that mantle? To not only live cowering in fear from the Heavenly Father who spared only her of her whole family, but to spend her time praising Him?
Something in her aches with discontent.
"Don't you want to know?" Deirdre whispers.
She knows things now. She wants to know more. She wants to leave the hollow feeling of her childhood behind and be someone who understands.
Julia nods, then finally voices it as the apothecary's head tilts in bemusement. "Yes. I do."
The knowledge is enough to drown what remains of that girl who might have baked bread in Kilkenny, or married Daniel the baker's son. Knowing how a world so corrupt can bend to one's will with something as simple as the useless immortal soul on the line is enough to twist her into something sharp and strong and charismatic within a century or so. Something new, dark, and shining. Ruby.
She makes things, helps people, ruins people, lives lifetime after lifetime in a body that never dies. She's good, the demon says, almost grudgingly, and she just says, "I know."
When they burn her in Germany she just laughs and laughs through the fire and, for the fun of it, swears to curse them all in her next life, before she lets the body die.
Ruby has lost track of how many centuries it's been in Hell. When pain is how you measure your existence, it's always the tip of the razor or the shock of the spell dragging you through the present. It's Lilith's blood pumping through her veins that makes her strong and powerful enough not to care.
Some scoff at her, because she was once stupid, innocent, childish. But she knows things now. She's learned. She understands Heaven, Hell, and Earth, because she understands pain and the delusion needed to avoid it.
Lilith seizes her, and Ruby goes along willingly. "I need you," she says, "for something very important. This is what you were made for. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ruby says immediately. "What can I do?"
"You're going to run," Lilith says, her gaze fast on Ruby's face. "You're going to turn on Hell. And you're going to lead the Winchesters right to the door of our Lord's cage so they can release Him."
She starts. "The Winchesters – "
"Are destined for this."
Ruby nods, slowly, and sinks to a knee in front of her Queen. "Why me?" she asks, half-begging. "Why has He given me the honor?"
"Because you're a survivor. Because you're a believer. And because I trust you as I do myself." Lilith tilts her head back to look up into the early circles of Hell, past the screaming and the dying, to the world above, and she says, with almost maternal pride, "Now run."