Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are Kripke's brainchild. I make no claims to the contrary.
Set in the middle of Season 3.
Dean heard scuffling from behind him as he glared through the crack in the front door. Ruby stood on Bobby's front porch, arrogant hand on hip, expression of prejudice to rival Dean's on her face.
Dean's first instinct was to shoot her; but as he tightened his grip on his gun and tugged it an inch from his waistband, his second instinct stopped him. Regular guns were useless against demons. He knew that.
And the damn Colt was in the car.
And Ruby seemed to know that, too, because at Dean's instinctual twitch, she smirked. "Gonna shoot me, Dean?"
Dean's lip twitched. "Thinking about it."
And he was. Even if it didn't work, he might shoot her here and now on principle.
The damned bitch seemed to read his mind. "Fat lot of good that'll do you."
"I ain't got time for your bullshit. What the fuck are you doing here?"
Ruby's eyebrows quirked, as if he should already know the answer. "I'm here to help." She started forward, hand raising to press on the door to let herself in.
Dean pushed back, arm and knee keeping the door where it was. "We don't need your help," he growled, finally pulling his gun in front of him and aiming it loosely through the door.
Ruby's eyes flicked down to the gun briefly, then back to Dean, indignant anger flaring on her face. "If you lumbering idiots could stay out of trouble for five minutes, I wouldn't have to hang around," she snapped. "But you let Sam get attacked by a Clostrid, so now I have to save your asses again."
"You—a Cl—a what?" Despite his anger and hatred, Dean faltered, the gun's aim slipping down an inch.
Ruby smirked again. "See? You do need my help."
She pushed against the door again, and Dean, still caught up in confusion, let the door fall open further. Before he could gather himself enough to stop her, she had breezed through the doorway and into the library.
"Wha—wait a second!" Dean slammed to door and turned to go after the bitch, but Bobby, still standing in the doorway of the library, put a hand up to his chest to stop him. He growled and swatted at Bobby's hand in disbelief. "She—Bobby!"
"Now, just hold on a second," Bobby pressed lowly, turning his head back and forth a few times between Dean and Ruby's back as she skirted around the outside edge of the library—around the Key of Solomon painted on the ceiling, the sneaky bitch—toward the kitchen, where Sam lay. "Let's just wait and see."
"You—Bobby!" Dean bristled. "You can't possibly be buying this!"
Bobby turned fiercely back to Dean. "Would you rather spend hours trying to dig up answers while Sam's insides turn black?" he snapped in a whisper. "Maybe wait until his hair falls out, his skin peels off?"
"I—She—" Dean stuttered, rage still bubbling hot in his gut.
Bobby's eyebrows raised, head jerking forward slightly, as if to challenge 'what?', then he turned after Ruby and hurried through to the kitchen, leaving Dean gaping in the hallway. Every inclination in Dean screamed at him to go in there, grab Ruby by her blonde hair and her stupid leather jacket and throw her out of the house, but—damn it, Bobby had a point.
Forcing himself to swallow his pride, Dean followed after Bobby, stopping short of the kitchen to watch. Jo was was pressing a wet cloth to Sam's forehead as he shifted and moaned on the cot. Ellen stood protectively over Sam, hands up in protest as she demanded, "Who the hell are you?"
"She might be able to help," Bobby gruffed. Dean couldn't see his face, but he could hear the apprehension in Bobby's tone. He forced himself to swallow a comment.
Ellen's eyes flicked briefly between Bobby and Ruby, then with a curt nod, she lowered her hands and stepped back. Ruby was at the foot of the cot in the next instant, peeling a dry towel away from Sam's leg. Sam's hissed, back arching slightly as Ruby prodded around the wounds.
"Well?" Dean said, arms crossed as he ambled into the doorway to stand beside Bobby.
Ruby raised her head to glare at him briefly, then resumed her inspection without a word. On the cot, Sam's grunted in pain, pushing himself up on his elbow to watch for a moment before collapsing back with a gasp. Ellen was immediately on the floor at his side, shushing him gently as she smoothed his hair away from his face again.
Finally, after Ruby had worked her fingers from Sam's ankle all the way up to his thigh, she stood quickly and started back toward the library. "We've got some time, but we should hurry," she said, striding around the Key of Solomon again and going to Bobby's desk. She started pushing things around for a moment—ignoring Bobby's protests—before she found a pen and a pad of paper and started scrawling hurriedly.
"These are the things we're gonna need," she said as she worked her way down the page. "And get some water boiling on the stove."
Bobby grunted an acknowledgment, still clearly displeased that his desk had been messed up, and turned into the kitchen. Dean heard Bobby banging around the kitchen, filling a pot of water and starting it on the stove, but he didn't take his eyes off the demon for even a second. When she finally finished her list, Ruby straightened up and saw Dean's posture and expression.
She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "What?" she snapped.
Dean shrugged condescendingly, but he didn't answer her. Ruby huffed and thrust the notepad into his chest as she shoved past him. Dean glanced down the list quickly. The things she asked for were simple enough. Bobby probably had all of them on-hand—except the last one.
"Blood of a newborn, male lamb," Dean read aloud, "slaughtered under the light of the full moon. Well, that's specific."
Ruby, leaning in the doorway, tipped her head in his direction. "It's full moon, isn't it?"
Dean conceded the point in his mind, but that didn't negate his point. "It's February," he countered. "I can't imagine there are newborn lambs in this part of the country in February."
Ruby straightened up from the doorway. "Then I'll be back. Get everything else together and boil the herbs while I'm gone."
Dean stepped out of her way as she breezed through the library again, dramatically bowing her out. He was more than happy to see her go. As soon as the front door slammed closed, he turned and handed the list to Bobby with a sigh.
"Do you have everything else?" he asked.
Bobby scanned his eyes down the list. "Yeah, I got it all."
Dean nodded and knelt by Sam again. His eyes were closed tightly as he panted heavily at the ceiling, but Dean could tell he was fully conscious. He laid a hand on Sam's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "How you doing?"
Sam shuddered. "Pain's bad," he breathed.
Dean swallowed and dropped his head. His mind started to wander into worst-case-scenario territory again, but Ellen's voice drew him back to the present.
"Who the hell was that?"
Dean sighed, his breath rumbling almost to a growl. "Someone hell-bent on 'being helpful', for reasons completely beyond me."
"And I take it from your tone that you don't trust her?"
Dean's jaw circled as he struggled to keep his composure. "Not even a little bit."
"So...a demon, then?"
Dean huffed a humorless chuckle. "A God-damned, hell-spawn witch-demon," he clarified, hatred dripping from every syllable, "and she wants us all to be buddies." He glared sideways at Ellen, daring her to press the subject, and to his relief, Ellen seemed to take the message. Nothing more was said about it.
"Sam?" Ellen coaxed instead, waiting until Sam opened his eyes at her with a grimace. "Would you be more comfortable out of those jeans?"
Sam swallowed, apprehension fluttering briefly across his face. Dean shifted uncomfortably, acutely aware that there were two women in the room, and Sam was more than a little modest. He was distinctly surprised when Sam closed his eyes again and nodded.
But, he supposed, Ellen had been an ER nurse once upon a time, and boxer shorts weren't all that embarrassing.
Ellen patted Sam's hand and rose to her feet, retrieved the pair of shears from the table, and quickly cut through the remainder of Sam's pant leg all the way through the waistband. Jo got up and walked away as she worked, but by the time Ellen and Dean were pulling Sam's jeans down his other leg, she had returned with one of Bobby's throw blankets in hand. She laid it gently across Sam's waist and bare leg, and Sam gave her a weak nod of thanks.
After that, the kitchen was quiet except for Sam's pained gasping and the sounds of Bobby rummaging about the house for the ingredients on Ruby's list. When the pot on the stove started to rattle, announcing that the water had boiled, Bobby started dumping various herbs into the pot, and the house started to fill with a stringent, earthy smell.
It was perhaps twenty minutes before Ruby threw open the front door again without knocking—which made both Dean and Bobby bristle with irritation. She paid them no mind; rather, she strode confidently into the kitchen, a metal pail in hand.
"This comes from a sheep dairy in North Carolina," she said as she lowered the pail to the floor at the foot of Sam's cot.
"A sheep dairy? Seriously?" Dean leaned a little to look into the pail, which was about half-full with dark, syrupy blood. Jo shifted uneasily and scooted away a little bit.
Ruby ignored his question, going instead to the pot on the stove and looking in. "A few more minutes on that, I think," she said, turning away again. She surveyed the table quickly, where Bobby had dropped the bottles and jars of ingredients, then wandered back toward Sam. Dean stood up, just so she wasn't standing over him.
"So all of this," he said, waving his hand around the kitchen as a whole, "will do what, exactly?"
"The potion," Ruby jerked her head toward the pot on the stove, "will slow the spread of the infection. Make his blood uninhabitable for a little while. The lamb's blood will draw the infection out of the wounds."
"So it's an infection?" Ellen asked.
Ruby spared her a glance and nodded. "A bacterial infection," she clarified, "but regular drugs won't do anything. It was created by accident by a witch-doctor, so only witchcraft can kill it."
"A witchcraft bacterial infection," Bobby repeated incredulously. "Why haven't we heard of this?"
"Probably because it was eradicated within a few years," Ruby answered, her voice bored and drawling. "If it's back, it's because someone is trying to replicate the good doctor's work."
"What the hell for?" Dean burst, anger surging through him at the idea that witches might be infecting civilians.
Ruby turned a glare on him again. "Well, I wouldn't know, now would I?" she snapped.
Sam shifted on the cot, pushing himself up on his elbow again. "H-how do you know all this?" he asked, his voice shaky and tight.
"I was around the first time," Ruby answered as she lowered her eyes to him, her tone softening.
An inexplicably uneasiness tugged in Dean's chest. The revelation that she was there the first time worried him, but he was mostly unnerved by the fact that her demeanor had changed so quickly from hostile and defensive to soft and...seductive? He didn't quite know what to call it, but he hated it. It made his skin crawl.
"Were you working with him?" Dean accused.
Ruby glared up at him through her eyelashes again. "No," she answered him firmly.
There's that hostility again, Dean though, just like that.
"Well, then, how do you know so much about it?"
"I helped get rid of it the first time," she threw back indignantly, hands crossing over her chest.
And there's the classic defensive gesture.
Dean crossed his arms, too, mirroring her posture. "Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Hey!" Sam snapped, causing both of them to look over. "Can we please not do this right now?"
Dean turned the request over in his head for a second, then rejected it. "Sam, I'm not gonna let a demon do some witchy spellwork on you—"
"I don't think we have a choice!" Sam ground out forcefully through another tight grimace. "I c—I can feel it, Dean!" He threw his head back and gasped. "I don't think we have much time!"
Dean looked down at Sam's leg again, resolve weakening a little. The blackness around the wounds had indeed spread a little further out, and it had even begun to creep back into the open flesh.
"He's right," Ruby said, head twitching to the side arrogantly. "So what's it gonna be?"
Dean groaned in frustration as he surveyed the wounds, then looked back into Sam's pain-filled eyes. "You're sure?" he asked. "You trust her?"
Sam gasped again, but he didn't blink as he nodded. "I trust her enough."
Dean raised his chin on an inhale as he stared at Sam. His instinct told him that Sam was either panicking or in so much pain that he'd take any option on the table; and he wasn't going to let Sam make a dumb mistake like this just because he wasn't thinking clearly.
"Dean?" Bobby prodded from across the kitchen, and Dean flicked his eyes to where he stood by the stove. Bobby sighed through his nose and raised his eyebrows. "I'm not saying it's a good idea, but..."
Dean closed his eyes and steeled himself. "I can't fucking believe this!" He turned his back on the rest of the room, anger flaring viciously as he pinched the bridge of his nose. This was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.
But Bobby's unfinished statement bounced around in his head. He knew how Bobby would have finished that sentence: it's the best idea we've got. And as much as he hated it, he didn't have a better one.
"Fine!" he finally spat as he whirled back around to face them, still in utter disbelief that he was agreeing to this. He fixed Ruby with a vicious glare, trying to communicate without words the exact nature of what he would do to her if this went wrong.
Ruby's lips quirked up at the corner. "Attaboy," she purred.
Before Dean could respond to her, she turned on her heel back toward the stove and looked down into the pot again. She seemed satisfied with the concoction because, without a word, she moved the pot from the hot burner to a cold one. Then she grabbed the bottle of red wine Bobby had found and started pouring it into the pot.
"How did the witch-doctor accidentally create a magical, flesh-eating disease?" Jo suddenly asked.
Ruby answered her without stopping her preparations. "He wasn't much of a witch," she said as she stirred the pot. "He tried to teach himself how to do magic. He thought he could make a remedy to cure all evils, but he got the Latin wrong."
"He got the Latin wrong?" Dean repeated.
Ruby sighed exasperatedly, though Dean knew immediately she was more irritated with the doctor's folly than with Dean. "Yes, the Latin. If he'd consulted a real witch—or anyone versed in Latin, for that matter—they'd have told him that he was curing the remedy to all evils." She tapped the spoon on the side of the pot, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. "Subtle linguistic difference. So, of course, he gave his remedy to someone who was sick, and it magnified the infection she already had."
The room was quiet for a beat as the information sank in. Finally, Bobby rubbed the back of his neck and said, simply, "Wow."
Ruby turned from the stove briefly to grab another ingredient from the table. "I suppose," she continued as she added it to the potion, "he should get some credit for trying to fight fire with fire, especially during a time when the only cure for true evil was...well, fire."
Dean wasn't so sure about that. He'd long held the opinion that witchcraft of all kinds was evil, even if you meant good by it. The result of the doctor's efforts was proof enough.
But then again, what were they doing right now if not using witchcraft to counter witchcraft?
He clenched his hands into fists at the thought.
Ruby tapped the spoon on the side of the pot again and set it aside. Then she hovered both hands over the pot and started speaking in Latin.
Dean clenched his fists harder—so hard he thought his fingernails might break skin.
Ruby finished her incantation, and a purplish glow started to emit from within the pot. It slowly grew brighter, until the entire area around the stove was engulfed in violet light; then, like a bubble had burst, the light suddenly disappeared again.
"It's done," Ruby said, turning away from the stove. "Have him drink some of this every half-hour, as much as he can."
As Ruby took two long strides toward Sam's cot, Bobby took a coffee mug down from the cupboard and ladled some of the potion into it. Ruby nudged the pail of lamb's blood closer to Dean with her foot.
"After he starts drinking the potion, paint this inside the wounds," she said.
Dean's eyebrows raised. "Put blood in the wounds?"
"The bacteria are attracted to purity," she said. "The lamb's blood will attract the infection back into the wounds. Once the blood turns black, wash it out with holy water. Then do it again, until the infection is gone."
At the mention of holy water, Dean stiffened, and Sam flinched subtly.
"Obviously, I can't do that part," she added as she rounded Dean toward the library again.
Sam's eyes were wide, shifting back and forth between Dean and Ruby, and his breath was quickening a little.
Dean tried to give him a sympathetic expression, but he felt like an idiot. Sympathy wasn't going to help what was coming, and he knew it. There seemed to be no other options, and he was going to subject Sam to the same unbearable pain again. And again. And again.
Ruby was leaving. He could hear her footsteps retreating through the library. Half an hour ago, he was happy to see her go.
"Wait," he called back over his shoulder.
The footsteps stopped.
Dean took a deep breath, shoving prejudice to the side. "Is there anything you can do for the pain?"
A very pregnant silence hovered in the house for a moment. Even Sam fell silent, as if he was holding his breath. Then, Dean heard Ruby start to come back, footsteps slower and tentative.
"I can try another spell," she said as she ambled back into his line of vision, "but you won't like it."
Dean narrowed his eyes at her, but he let her continue.
"It'll alter his perception of the pain," she said. "His body will still feel everything, but his mind will interpret it differently."
"Can't you just—I don't know, numb his leg? Make it so he can't feel anything?"
Ruby crossed her arms again, but for once, Dean didn't interpret it as defensiveness. It seemed more like thoughtfulness.
"That's a much more difficult spell," she said, "and not one I'm familiar with."
"Oh, but you're familiar with the art of messing with people's minds?" Dean scoffed. "That's comforting."
"Hey, if you don't want my help, then I have other places to be," Ruby retorted.
Dean clenched his jaw to stop a growl from escaping. "I don't want you in my brother's head."
"I won't be in his head," Ruby answered, "not really. And if it makes you feel any better, the spell is...fragile. It'll break if Sam tries to fight it. It won't do anything."
Dean glared at her for a moment, then turned to Sam to gauge his reaction. Sam's was watching both of them closely, eyes darting between the two of them. His features were still shrouded in pain, though, so it was hard to tell what he was thinking.
"He'll be fully aware?" Dean asked.
"If anything, he'll be more aware," Ruby clarified. "He can hold a conversation and everything."
Dean fixed Sam with an apprehensive stare. "Sam?"
"Please," Sam breathed immediately, eyes fluttering closed. "Dean, please. I don't—I don't think I can do that again."
Dean closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. He wished like hell there was another way around this.
But wishful thinking never got them anywhere.
Fuck it.
"Okay," he agreed with another uneasy sigh. "Do it."
Law of Parsimony: the philosophical or scientific principle, according to which an explanation is made with the fewest possible assumptions.
Also known as Occam's Razor or the Precedence of Simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation is to be preferred.
