When Lilith first approached her with the idea, Ruby had scoffed, inasmuch as one could scoff in Hell. "It'll never work," she said scornfully. "Too many variables. Too much of a gamble."
And Lilith had smiled, inasmuch as any demon ever smiled in Hell. "That's why you'll do it," she said, and of course she was right. Ruby had never been able to resist a challenge. Not while human, and certainly not now.
It'd taken a long time to get here. A long time and so many chances where things could have gone wrong and they just kept going right. And sometimes better than expected. Whatever had happened in Broward County, for example.
And then Lilith killed Dean and Sam Winchester practically ran right into her arms.
Sam Winchester. She almost felt sorry for him, sometimes, the way he talked about getting his brother back from Hell, and then getting revenge for his brother in Hell, and then getting revenge for his broken brother once he was back from Hell. He tried so hard and just never quite got it.
But he had bigger, better things to do, and all she had to do was show him to it.
It all fell together, better than she could have hoped. It was like, she thought with a quirk of her lips, God was watching over her. Or something, anyway. Dean and Sam broke farther apart every day. When they'd finally cracked what looked like for good, she'd worried when Sam had picked up his phone and checked a message. But whatever Dean said, it only helped her.
He would have loved that, she thought. Just his kind of fucking hilarious.
Lilith died. She looked surprised, as though even after all these months she hadn't really expected it to happen. The floor began to crack open and Sam…Sam had that look on his face like he didn't understand. Joy bubbled up in her like a living thing and she reached for his face, cradled it between her hands, touched his neck, his shoulders. "You're brilliant," she said, breathing hard. "You did wonderful, look, you did it- I was brilliant, I was perfect-"
His eyes were slow to focus on her, and she could hear everything spilling out of her, but it was time for that, she'd done it, she'd actually done it and even if he was looking at her now like he'd been kicked in the stomach, it wouldn't last for long.
Lucifer was coming. The future would be bright.