Title: Fever Goes Higher
Summary: And just when things couldn't get any worse, Ruby came.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Pairings: Pre-fic Dean/Ruby; mentions of Ruby/Sam.
Spoilers: Possible, for Season Four.
Rating: M, for reasons below.
Warnings: Mentions of premarital sex; language; some torture
Dean's dying slowly this time around, some sort of infection seeping into his body and rotting it slowly. Hell isn't the cleanest place, and having gashes whipped across his back, and just about everywhere else, isn't exactly keeping him in the best of health.
The disease might not be new to him, but the pain is still there, in his dried-out lungs, no longer coated with the wall of moisture that the mucus and scum he's coughed up provided, and in his abdomen, like knives stabbing outwards. He doesn't know what it is that Alastair gave him, but it's not fun; like a really, really bad flu, multiplied by a thousand. The demon said it would take a little while for it to finish him off, but eventually his weakened immune system would just collapse entirely, if the starvation didn't get to him first, and wouldn't that be fun?
(The bastard –he wants to pick up that razor blade so badly at time, and just shove it into his demonic form, for all the good that it would do. But that would mean saying yes, and once he does there's no going back.)
His skin feels dry; he hasn't had a drop of sweat trace its way down his face for days. Alastair doesn't give him food or drink most of the time, and why should he? That would provide some small bit of mercy, and he can't have that.
At this point, it's hard to tell if he's feverish or if the reason his body feels like it's on fire is because of all the flames surrounding him. Probably, it's a little bit of both, but that doesn't really matter. Wherever the heat is coming from, it's starting to get to him, and he closes his eyes as the fires near him seem to leap up and increase a million times over in their intensity. He tries pursing his lips together; passes his tongue over them in a futile attempt for some semblance of moisture.
A tremor passes through his body. Where the fuck is Alastair?
He grits his teeth together, suppressing a scream, and forces his eyes to open. Summoning energy that he should be saving and using up just a little bit at a time, he thrusts himself forward and strains against his bonds. A cry escapes his lips, barely audible to his clogged-up ears, but nobody seems to care. These demons are Alastair's bitches when they're here downstairs, and if he doesn't want them to use Dean at the moment, then he's all by himself.
Actually, scratch that –somebody is approaching him, their image distorted slightly from the rippling heat in the background (that, or his eyesight's starting to get untrustworthy, which isn't such a distance possibility, considering how high his fever feels).
Whoever it is, they're a dark silhouette against the fires, and yeah, they're definitely coming closer. It's not Alastair; Dean can be sure of that (too short, and besides, Alastair doesn't walk as much as he slithers, fucking scumbag serpent) and so his body tenses as he assumes that it's one of his little henchmen hellions, come to torture him while he's down. He can only imagine what must go through their heads: Oh look, Dean's dying a painful and disease-driven death! Let's go have some fun!
The fires and the molten floor blur together into one, rippling mess, and he can feel his temperature spike until the only thing that isn't part of the hot, red-orange chaos is the approaching figure.
"Well, well." She -he? No; he can tell now; definitely she- seems to advance thirty feet in a second, until she's standing right in front of him. "Look what the hellhounds dragged down here."
"Could say the same about you." The words are a struggle, but astonishment and denial force them up his parched throat and out of him. "What're you doing here, Ruby?" (Dumb question, he knows, but it's worth asking, and making casual small talk is a skill that'll get driven out of you in the first decade down here; by the second, screams and maybe a bit of sarcasm are what you used to, and he's approaching his third now. At this point, he's just stopped caring.)
"Oh, not much. I was just visiting back home and figured I'd try to bump into you." Her lip curls up as she stares at him on the rack.
The thought that was in the back of his mind, the one telling him that he's hallucinating; that none of this is real, is definitely confirmed at her words, because this is Hell, after all. Even most of the demons down here hate it, and although maybe Ruby could if she wanted to, there's no way she would go back down here. Nobody in their right mind would (although, that does imply that Ruby is sane in the first place, which, yeah, he questions).
"You're dead." He's stating the obvious, of course –the day Lilith is merciful is the day he strolls out of the Pit alive- but maybe if he can convince her she's a hallucination, she'll leave.
Or something like that. Logic is screwy down here.
Her lips curl up slightly, and he wishes he had the strength to spit on her feet. "So are you."
"At least I'm not a demon." This has to be a rehash of a hundred conversations that they had years and years ago, when both of them were still alive, but it's so comfortingly familiar that he would gladly have it a thousand times more.
"Well, you're an idiot." She gazes at the chains on his wrists, binding him down to the rack, constantly wearing away at his skin. "Come on. Alastair's got to have given you a few... options by now. Why not just say yes and get the inevitable over with?"
"'Cause unlike you, I've got a soul. And a body." One that's back on earth, sure, and probably a pile of ashes, but it's still probably better than whatever she's got.
Actually, come to think of it, it's kind of weird that she looks like that, all sharp angles and blond hair. That vessel would be dead, right? He didn't exactly get the chance to look back and reminisce after he died; what exactly the aftermath was, he isn't really sure. Plus, he's seen her, dark eyes and grey, smooth skin; seen what had lived under the vessel's skin.
(but this is a hallucination, he reminds himself, and she isn't really here. It's a fever brought on from something he's dying of that's taking shape in her form, and of course, it makes sense that she looks that way, because that's how he knows her.)
"Well, I did think that this would be a little more... comfortable to you, but if you'd rather see the real me –relive those last twenty-four hours a bit-- then we can definitely arrange something." Her hands brush down her chest, in a smooth gesture over her curves, and come to rest on her hips. "Just say the word and we can, Dean."
"Do I have to say it again? You're a hallucination; you can't show me anything. Now leave me alone."
She takes a step closer, black boots sinking into the hot ground and leaving harsh, deep prints. "'Leave me alone?' That's what you said before. At first." For someone that was supposed to have been on his and Sam's side, she damn well seemed to be enjoying this, torturing him in her own way, which was miles from Alastair's, but still not what he'd call pleasant.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Her fingers reach out and stroke his cheek, and he feels his temperature rise by a dozen or so degrees, heat stabbing through him, like lighting on top of an inferno, although this heat definitely isn't coming from what's around him. Or the fever which he's running, although that's what's causing him to imagine all of this, right? He can feel her fingers as they wipe away his sweat, trace invisible patterns across his face, but this isn't some everyday cold he's running. It's affecting all of his senses, that's all.
"Come on, Dean. Don't bother playing me for a fool when I know more about the battleground than you do -yeah, even after a few decades, you hardly know a thing about this old place. I'm kind of disappointed. Surely Alastair hasn't driven every memory out of you." She leans closer, until her breath joins her fingers on his cheek, and that and her voice overpowers everything else. "It must have been what, twenty years ago? Standard Hell time, of course. Sammy's out on some late-night research, supposed to be letting you go down to the bar, but you didn't really go there. All you wanted to do was stay indoors and watch a bunch of adult channels. Beer in your hand; self-pity for you to wallow in, the whole nine yards. Just a pitiful night on all counts... 'till I showed up."
She steps back suddenly, hand falling from his face, but the heat doesn't lessen, and the air around him seems to be falling and rising in a pattern of waves more and more, and he wishes that Hell just a fun desert mirage with a hot blond standing in front of you. "I guess it was lucky for us that Sammy ended up meeting with that interfering little spirit on his own, right? Bit of a delay there."
He grits his teeth and tries not to remember, tries not to go back to that night when he tossed all of his morals and all of his training out that grimy motel window, but in the end he doesn't resist recalling and savoring the memory, because it's a tie to his time on Earth, and face it, he has few enough of those left as it is.
"You were cheaper than a whore."
She reacts at this, but just barely, with a defiant tilt of her chin as she makes a small noise, half-laugh and half-snarl. "You think there was more to it than I had a free night and your gorgeous brother wasn't there? Unlike with Sammy, sex with you never involved emotions."
"You stay away from Sammy, you-" he gasps, words cut off as he coughs up what feels like hot, sharp slivers of rock.
"Sorry, Dean. It's too late for that." She grins and the vessel does fade away this time, melting briefly into the demonic form he saw briefly on Earth before dissolving further into black smoke that curls and rises, as though she can really leave the place without getting permission. "He's mine now."
"No! It's not true; he isn't yours!" Dean thrashes against the rack in his dying throes. He can feel his fever spiking now; turning his body into an inferno, and he wants to scream out, to tell Ruby what she can go do to herself but she's gone and at the same time he wants to beg Alastair to just end it now –but there's no mercy until finally his body gives out and he feels hands push him back against the rack and heal him, and Alastair's back and he doesn't know if he actually saw Ruby, or if what she said was true, but it's easy to forget now, because it's all beginning again.