It takes a week and a half for me to lose my grip completely. I must visit every crossroads in the Midwest in ten days, trying to make a deal with any and every demon, killing them when they won't, but I'm falling, falling fast into a deep, dark pit of nothingness where it doesn't matter who lives or who dies, as long as Dean wasn't in Hell.
A week and a half after I first killed that girl, there's a bottle under my bed instead of a gun, and Ruby's knife in my hand when I sleep, but most of the time I don't. I can't tell you where I am when I snap completely and decide that I'm better off in Hell and I can't stop it anymore. I'm angry and so wasted that I can hardly see, but I make it to the nearest crossroads, and there's demon there, sneering at me like I'm the punch line to his favorite joke, and maybe I am, but I know that there's one fool proof way to get Dean out of Hell, and that's for me to go in his place.
The demon tells me that I'm worthless to him, and that Dean's where he should be, that Lilith has him right where she wants him. I persuade myself that he must be lying, but he's not, and I know it before I threaten to kill him, stabbing Ruby's knife through his hand.
Something bubbles up inside of me, and I kill the demon and the person he's inside of anyway, but I don't feel any better. I could collapse there in the dirt and never get up, ever again, and I know I would be better off that way, anyway. Dean said that I would go dark-side eventually, and I can feel the evil inside of me starting to take over, and I know that if I don't do something about it soon, I'm going to tip right over the edge.
Maybe this is Lilith's plan, to get Dean in Hell, and slowly send me into madness so I can lead her stupid demon army. All that crap about her wanting my intestines on a stick was just a front to get me riled up.
Well, she's not going to win, I think, as I as stumble into the second grossest motel on the planet. She's not going to get Dean's soul and me to destroy the world. I'm probably going to Hell anyway; maybe we'll be together, me and Dean. And it seems like the best option.
Ruby shows up in my motel and something like relief flutters inside me when she says she's going to kill me, but she stabs the demon instead, and all hope flushes out of my system the same way it did when I saw the light leave Dean's eyes, and I hate her for it. Ruby looks at me, wiping the blood off on her jeans and tells me to get away from here as fast as I can.
She says she can help me, that everything she's done is for me, but she can't help me, not really, and she can't help Dean. So all she did was save a life that's not good for anything, or destined to be good for anything more than destruction, and I hate her for it.
I send her away, but I know in my heat, and whatever I have instead of a soul, that she'll be back. She always comes back. I don't know what I'll do when she does, but if she can't give me what I want, it's lights out for Ruby.
I'm cleaning my gun when she knocks on my door and tells me that her new body is socially conscious, it's just her in there.
Ruby marches right back into my life with all her snark and wit and the first thing she says is that she can't save Dean. Her eyes glance over and categorize what I have spread out over the one table I found that stands up, and she acts like she knows what I'm going through.
"I can get you something else you want," she says, and she looks so sad and so serious and so much like my last hope not to let Dean down that I let myself believe her.
But I can't help feeling like she's making fun of me, because there's nothing in the whole damn world I want but Dean. "What's that?" I sneer, hoping, praying she'll give me something to fight for, and knowing she's going to come up empty.
"Lilith," she says, and it's a promise. Ruby promises that even though she can't bring Dean back, she'll be able to give me the next best thing, the thing that Dad was never able to get: revenge. So I hang on a little bit longer.