Tag for Lazarus Rising
For Stray, because she is awesome sauce in a can! Betaed by the amazing Morgan!
Characters: Sam, Ruby, Bobby and...DEAN!
AN: I really wanted to finish this before the next episode...and I did! Yay for last minute saves and speedy betas --fist bumps Mo-- So enjoy everyone!
But O, yet more miserable. Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave—John Milton
She was a pretty blonde this time that made him think of another pretty blonde who he watched die, or the pretty blonde who possessed him, or the pretty blonde who opened the door for the hellhounds to attack Dean.
Sam didn't have much luck with pretty blondes.
"I want to make a deal."
"Yeah, and I want a condo in Orange County. We can't all get what we want," she replied, with a saccharine smile.
"Bring Dean back," he growled, his voice low and stone cold with rage and loss.
"Tough. You can't keep soul swapping your way out of the pit for all eternity. Baby, it doesn't work like that," the demon replied.
"You have to bring him back!" he bellowed, grabbing her by the arms and shaking roughly. Her eyes flashed red and then he was holding nothing but air.
--
He held his brother with a fierce grip, as if clinging to him would make it not real. He didn't know when Bobby came in. He didn't hear the sounds of mourning, didn't feel himself being pulled away from the blood and the mess.
He did feel Bobby carefully checking him for injuries, finding none and wrapping strong arms around him protectively. He did remember burying his head into Bobby's shoulder and crying himself dry.
The rest was a blur until he found himself back at Bobby's house, but it didn't matter what had happen. Nothing mattered.
Dean was gone.
--
Bobby watched the boy who had become his son sleeping fitfully on the couch. Moans of pain that he couldn't cure, wails of sorrow that he couldn't prevent. Bobby became a mechanic because he needed to be able to fix things more than he needed air, but this one he couldn't fix.
He softly touched the sweat drenched forehead, the only comfort he could offer. Bobby turned and paced into the kitchen. It had been three days since Dean had died, three days since their world had ended; but he kept holding on. For no other reason than the boy lying in the other room. Because he could hold on—would hold on—as long as he had someone to hold on for.
--
"We're not going to burn him." It was the first words Sam had spoken since the fateful midnight, his voice raspy. The youngest Winchester—the only Winchester—had spent the first five days in restless nightmare plagued sleep interwoven with hours of staring listlessly at the ceiling. This was the first time Bobby had really been sure he was even still alive. The pain was laid bare in those blue eyes, but something else creeped around his irises. Something Bobby had never seen in his eyes before. Something dark.
It only took Bobby a few minutes to realize that the darkness was Sam without Dean.
--
It was a bad idea, but it was his only idea and he didn't care if it was bad. He didn't care if the darn world ended because of it. He didn't care for anything or anyone, not now. Not except Dean.
The Colt was gone, but he had the knife. One blasted knife to fight off the entire forces of Hell. He held no illusions of his plan working, but if he accomplished nothing more than joining Dean in the pit…so be it.
He stepped across the railroad tracks into familiar soil. He walked through the silent graveyard, but his mind was full of sound. Echoes of the first time he'd been there. As if the land was scarred by the memory of that night.
Just like him.
The door loomed up in front of him, just as ominous as the first time he laid eyes on it but this time was different. This time he wasn't trying to keep it from being opened.
He settled against the cold stone and began his work.
--
Dawn began to creep over the horizon. The gray fog still lingered, its long fingers wrapping around the tombstones and the lone figure surround by them. Scarlet ran freely from the hands pressed against the cold stone. He banged his fist against the unrelenting granite. Last time the door was hard to protect, this time its unmoving form seemed to mock him.
It just figured that the gateway to Hell would be as uncooperative as its denizens.
Sam was tired, chilled to the bone from more than just the morning rain. He slapped the stone again, an almost inhuman cry of frustration and pain escaping his lips.
"I think you'd have more luck with a jackhammer…or you know, anything other than your hands."
A feral growl issued from him as he turned. She was leaning against the tombstone of a man whose name had worn long ago, forgotten with the ages. There may have been a time Sam would have thought her pretty—her straight brown hair framing a round face—but innocent things like love and pleasure had escaped him.
If Dean was in pain, Sam knew he had no right to feel different.
Any trace of teasing left her face and she came to his side, the picture of sympathy.
"Oh Sam, you aren't going to save him this way," she cooed, eyeing his battered hands.
"Who are you?"
She looked up at him, her eyes flashing black.
--
The grave dirt washed down the drain, and he let himself get lost in the warmth of the water rolling over his muscles and didn't think. Because thinking was something Sam would have done, and Sam was not someone he knew how to be right now.
He pulled back the curtain and stepped out. The bathroom was quickly growing cold, but to Sam it changed nothing. The whole world was cold now.
His clothes were folded into neat piles, almost too neat. The Trickster's cruel lesson was still present in his mind, and he made a conscious effort not to lose himself completely to the methodic hunter he had been back then. Frankly, who he had become then—ready to sacrifice a life of an innocent—had scared him. Dean wouldn't want that.
He walked out into the grungy motel room, and his senses were instantly assaulted all at once. He smelled steaming tea and something else he couldn't place, he heard the bang of cutlery against a metal pot, and saw the brunette standing in his kitchenette.
"Ruby…are you cooking?" It was one of the strangest questions he remembered asking. She turned to him, pressing the spoon against her lip.
"What else would I be doing in the kitchen?" she said with an overly obvious eye roll.
"Is it for a spell?"
"No, it's for dinner," she replied with a grin. She ladled the substance onto a plate and set it on the table before him. Now he realized what it was he smelled.
Spaghetti.
He stared dazed at the plate, this scenario not making sense no matter how he turned it. There was a demon in his motel room…cooking him dinner.
"Why?" he finally managed. Ruby had followed him around before, saved his life a time or two, but never anything like this.
"Sam, when was the last time you ate anything? And I don't count anything heated in the back of a mini mart," she replied, her face softening, "you look like a skeleton."
He was tempted to check for poison until Ruby spooned up another plate and began digging in. He took a seat, distantly watching her eat.
"Why are you doing this?" he repeated again. The demon sighed, obviously realizing he wasn't about to let it drop. Her eyes came up to him.
"I was human once, Sam," she replied her voice even, "I still remember what it's like to lose someone."
The rest of the meal they ate in silence.
--
She was still there when he woke up; he pushed open the door to his room finding her sitting cross-legged on the couch. Dean would have ripped him a new one for falling asleep with a demon in the room—for even letting a demon in the room—but Dean wasn't here. Hence the not caring.
"What are you still doing here?"
"Good morning to you too," Ruby tossed back sarcastically. "I don't have anywhere better to be."
"That never stopped you from being elsewhere before," he tossed back coldly. The brunette merely shrugged.
Sam spent the next week emerged in research, desperately trying to find something he missed. And she didn't leave. Everyday he'd get back from time behind to books to find a warm dinner waiting on him, and every night he'd fall asleep with Hell's little watch dog perched on his couch.
He didn't miss the irony of how messed up that was.
Ruby didn't expand on why she was there, but by the end of the week he found himself counting on it. Like her presence in someway grounded him. It was only then that her fugitive glances made sense. It was only then her reason was clear.
When he tried to open the Devil's Gate he was ready to throw his life away, and Ruby wasn't so sure he wouldn't do the same now. So the fugitive glances made sense.
Somehow it was comforting to know his life didn't go unnoticed now that Dean was gone.
--
"The answer's not there," Ruby commented, spinning the seat around and perching on it backwards. He looked up from the ancient text he had managed to uncover in a dingy library.
"And next you're going to tell me there's no way to save him," Sam replied darkly.
"I didn't say there was no way, just that it's not there," she replied, "Sam, I don't know if we can save Dean, but I do know we can kill the evil SOB that took him from you."
"How?" he asked, broken…desperate. So far Ruby hadn't offered him any real help, but if she suddenly was going to he wasn't about to look a gift demon in the mouth.
She stared meaningfully into his blue green eyes.
"You know how."
--
It had been four months since Dean died, four long painful months. They had fallen into a routine, never fully in sync like he and Dean had been, but in step with each other enough to count on. Sam was never sure he could fully trust her, but he was sure that he needed too. For his own sake.
Every morning he trained physically. Pushing the limits of what he could do. Every afternoon was committed to research, throwing himself into the hunt for Lilith; and every night he and Ruby worked on his abilities.
Sam collapsed into the chair, closing his eyes and focusing. Static ran across the flickering screen and it shut off.
"I didn't know you were gonna use your powers to become a total tv hog," Ruby huffed.
"I didn't know you liked chick-flicks," he tossed back.
"A girl's gotta do something to keep from going insane."
"Read a book," he replied tiredly, heading toward his bed.
"Control your OCD!"
"And Ruby, clean up your crud. It looks like you just got back from the laundry mat and threw your clothes across the room," he griped, "It's unsanitary to leave bras hanging from the chairs."
O-C-D, she mouthed as he telekinetically bounced a pillow off her head.
What they had wasn't life really, but he owed Ruby for keeping him alive over the last four months. What they had wasn't pleasant really, but they had moments. Moments when Ruby remembered being human, and Sam remembered being alive.
--
"I'm tired of cooking, how bout pizza?" was the first thing Ruby said as he came in after his jog.
"Pizza for breakfast?" he raised his eyebrow.
"Gotta live a little Sam," she answered with a grin.
"You're a strange demon."
"And you're a strange human, guess we match."
He rolled his eyes, and took a good look at her. Which resulted in another eye roll.
"Do you have to walk around like that?" he motioned to Ruby's sleep attire. To his surprise she gave an amused grin in return.
"I walk around like this every morning, good job for finally noticing Sam," she ribbed.
"Whatever, I'm gonna go shower."
"Good cause you kind of stink," she replied absently flipping through the yellow pages.
"What's on the agenda today?" he asked from halfway across the room.
"Gonna go into town and see if I can find out more about your demon pals."
"And who are we today?"
She leaned back against the cabinet and tapped an ink pen against her lip. "I'm thinking Katherine."
"You could try using the same alias once in a while," Sam commented.
"At least they can't trace me Wedge," Ruby retorted, watching as he departed into the bathroom. The room fell into comfortable silence, and she put on her best innocent little chica voice as she called for pizza.
She felt him before he even knocked on the door. Her heart stepped up a notch.
"Where is it?"
"Where's what?"
"The Pizza it takes to guys two deliver."
They were in the middle of an answer when Sam stepped out, locks still wet from the shower. His eyes grew in shock, looking from Dean to Bobby and then back to his brother.
He lunged forward to attack, but Bobby easily pulled him back. Ruby knew there was no match. Sam was younger and at the top of his game, but he wanted it to be true so he let Bobby stop him. He needed it to be true more than he needed air.
Sam closed the distance between him and his brother in a few strides. Holding on desperately like he had the limp body four months prior, only this time…Dean held back.