Title: A Cautionary Tale
Author: alakewood
Warnings: Spoiler for Malleus Maleficarum
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The story of Ruby.
Disclaimer: I don't own a thing.
XOXOXOX
I didn't sell my soul to the devil – didn't go to a crossroads with some hoodoo magic box. But, I might as well have.
When you go to a crossroads like Dean Winchester did, you know what the trade off is gonna be. For me, losing my soul was an unforeseen consequence, a byproduct even, of my actions. It wasn't my intent. The only real difference is, I guess, how conscious you are of the decision you're making.
The reason behind it was the same. Dean wanted to save Sam. And I wanted to save my brother and sister.
I prayed to God for so long. "Please spare us, O Lord. Please have mercy on our souls."
The Plague was sweeping through Europe. When my brother died and my sister started to get sick, I realized that praying to God just wasn't cutting it. Maybe in some utopian paradise Jesus could've saved us all. But this was no paradise. Every day becoming more and more of a Hell on earth. I turned my prayers somewhere else.
This is probably the biggest commonality between me and Dean – the reason for us losing our souls. It was our last resort.
There was this crazy, old lady in our village we used to joke about being a witch. As the Plague crept closer, her ranting started to make sense. She talked of "other" angels. Fallen ones that could help. This was their doing, after all. Spreading pestilence and causing destruction.
She taught me the ways.
My sister survived the Plague. Only a handful of us spared, the rest of the village – most of Europe, too – dead or dying.
I guess, if you really want to get technical about the whole thing, I was losing pieces of my soul every day. With every spell, every devotion.
At first – when you first pledge yourself to this way of life – it all lifts you up. The things I could do. With a though, a gesture, a few simple words. But power and magic come with a price.
Eventually, I had to pay up.
When you're human, you believe in the idea that there's Heaven and Hell. Nobody really knows for sure. Nobody's really been there.
Hell is all too real. The demons break you slowly. Use your memories to abuse you, torment you. Twist them, taint them. Then the physical torture starts.
They draw it out. And it doesn't stop.
At some point, you can no longer grasp the concept of time; a second, a week, a decade. It all blurs into an endless, infinite, eternity. All you become is a consciousness; distilled into the most basic, primal things. No corporeal body, no need for food or water or air, you subsist on feeling. And that's something not to waste energy on trying to figure out – how can you experience something sensory when all you are is fundamentally akin to a cluster of atoms or charged particles?
Most of us don't remember who we were before we became this. That's part of the rage that fuels us. All some of us know is what pain is, and, when they are let loose...
Those of us that carry parts of ourselves from before – the few that recall being human, and being good, and honest, and none of this – are fueled by the anger of knowing what was taken away from us.
The misery demons cause when they come topside actually has a reason. It's not just 'cause they - we - are "evil." We were made this way, others will endure the same. And the cycle will continue.
Plenty of room for us sinners in the pit. And there's no escaping it.
Just ask Dean Winchester.