Hiccups wake me the next morning. Terrible, shaking hiccups that push themselves out of my body. My head still feels fine, but now my stomach feels like it's trying to force everything in it out of it. I barely make it to the bathroom before last night's dinner makes its reappearance. There's more blood in my stomach that's floating around in the toilet with it than I would have expected. Watching it sink, dark red in a hypnotizing swirl, shocks me into full consciousness of what I'm doing, doing for Dean, doing to myself. Yesterday, I relished the taste as it pumped warmly through my body, but even the thought of it now makes me queasy.
It's bad enough to have evil inside of you, but it's a million times worse to voluntarily put more of it in your body so you can feel it coursing through your veins like the fires that are burning your brother in eternal damnation.
Dean wouldn't want this. I'll find another way to get Lilith. Ruby will understand.
Just because Ruby understands doesn't mean she's all gung-ho for our new course of action. "Are you sure, Sam?" Ruby asks for about the millionth time that hour. "I mean, I get it, okay?" she says. Ruby is sitting on a table watching me pace up and down the motel room. "But you're doing so well."
That's the worst part, I think, because I don't want to stop drinking demon blood because I know that I'm getting better, and I'm fighting, and I've found something empowering about this thing –this exorcising demons with your mind thing. Using Azazel's gift to work against him and his plan, to give Hell the biggest kick in the pants conceivable, and using their own blood and plan against them to kill Lilith.
I stop pacing and look Ruby dead in the eye. There's evil in her that doesn't show and that evil is in me too, and it doesn't matter what irony I find in it or what reasons I'm doing this for, the idea makes me sick.
"It's not the psychic thing I have a problem with," I tell her. Ruby sighs like she expected that. "I want to keep using the powers, Ruby," I say. "Isn't there another way?" I plead.
"Sam," she sighs. Ruby leans back on her hands and closes her eyes like she's thinking hard about something. "I'll do you a deal." She smirks at last, her eyes flicking open. It might be a trick of the light, but I swear Ruby's eyes turn black for a half a second. She pushes herself off of the table. "Just when you need it," she suggests. "You decide, you call the shots," Ruby asserts.
I feel okay with this plan. There's no other way, after all. Not any other choice.
Not for me at least.
It's been almost two months since Dean has died, and I can exorcise demons without my nose bleeding if I'm fully charged –that is: well-rested and chock-full of Ruby's blood. I'm taking blood from the demons we capture and practice on and from the demons we exorcise. The looks the people give me after the demon is gone don't bother me after a while.
It takes me almost two months for me to realize what I'm doing is good. Sometimes the demons ride the people extra hard for kicks and they're dead before we get to them, sometimes pulling the demon is too much for the body, but most of the time, the person lives, and I feel like it's the first time I can really get behind this job. Dean always said saving people before hunting things, but we followed Death around the country, and sometimes it seems we do more harm than good.
Ruby and I are good, though. If Dean was here, he would be proud of the work I'm doing.
I whisper it into my pillow and it keeps me going for tomorrow, keeps a nagging, hollow sense of hopelessness away.
Dean would be proud to be my brother.