…
Spoilers: Series. Season 4. Nothing specific yet.

Notes: 3 omg. Thank you to everyone who reviewed. I didn't think the whole Cas and Ruby trip would go over well at all.

..

ii.

The smiting of the hellhound doesn't go unnoticed, and once again they're pelting across a cracked city and hiding in burned out buildings. Or rather, Ruby's doing the hiding and Castiel's standing at the broken window watching coal colored smoke prowl the sky.

"Hey, your deathwish is showing."

Castiel makes no attempt to move. Ruby kicks her heels against the service counter she sat on, tries to pretend that the water stains on the sagging ceiling are interesting or that she can't smell the clotted reek of meat gone bad. Something is dead in here, and she doesn't want it to be her.

"I'm taking your shoes when they kill you."

No movement. He might as well be one of those decorative statues, sans fluffy wings and general good will towards demons trying to save their prim ass.

Ruby kicks off the counter and steps through puddles to Castiel, waving a hand in front of his face. "Earth to-"And stops, works her jaw and jams her hand into her jacket pocket.

She didn't think there was anything worth praying for anymore, but Castiel mouths the words with an absolute certainty.

Waiting, Ruby turns her eyes to the sky and watches, wondering if it was going to be today or tomorrow that they found their little lost lamb, the last one. It's one of those mortal shards that Hell hadn't managed to sweep away; a human thing, to want to take care of the things left behind, and there was nothing more left behind than Castiel.

"I don't have a deathwish," Castiel says suddenly, then tilts one of those sideways looks at her. Blue eyes and stubble along his jaw. Ruby frowns at him, scrapes her bare foot across dirty, cracked checkerboard tile.

"So your cunning plan is to hide in plain sight?"

"I'm not hiding." He assures her. "I'm waiting."

"That's…insane angel logic."

She doesn't know who taught Castiel how to smirk (wait, yes she does, and that's a road she doesn't want to travel down) but it's deeply unsettling.

…

Her kind is persistent…and reluctant to give up, not with the smell of angels lingering. A series of back alleys later, Ruby's got her knife clenched in one hand and a decidedly dead guy at her feet. She's almost sorry she had stabbed first and thought about questioning later; any news was good news, and it wasn't like it could get any worse.

When demons were killing each other just for a chance to slip into secondhand bodies, used meat? It was easier to avoid introductions. Hi, I'm Ruby and this is Castiel, Angel of the Lord. Traitor? Me?

"We have to stop this."

She likes the inclusion of 'we' but he's being kind of vague.

"I'm sorry," she huffs, and wedges the body behind some rubble (hiding evidence has never been a strong point for demons, and it's been a learning process.) "Would you have liked to read off a list of his sins first?"

"Envy."

And that…boggles her. So she ignores it because trying to understand angels is like…physics or something. He's back to looking at the sky when she straightens and turns back to him, open longing etched on every angle of his face, in his stance. Distress signal, calling home. Is there anyone out there? Is there anyone else?

"What do we have to stop?" she asks quietly, calling him back down.

"This. All of this." He's shaking his head, a bob in his throat as he speaks, she can't see his eyes but she knows they're narrowed into blue slits, like the whole apocalypse was a personal insult. "This is not right."

"There's no getting off the ride once it's been started, wings." She blows a strand of lank hair out of her eyes and hopes he doesn't notice that she had liberated the dead man's shoes.

He almost laughs, and that's when the air goes thick with a static buzz that Ruby can feel in her teeth.

Castiel's goes ridged, looks like he's been punched in the gut and actually feels it.

There's a sound like wings, and it's getting louder.

"Go." Castiel says in a rasp, watching the sky, his arms held out warily at his sides.

"Not-" 'cause hell, she's never seen him scared, and it's…

"Now." He doesn't raise his voice- never raises his voice- but it goes deep and terrifying, reaches down and grabs her by the core and that's what gets her going. She turns and runs-anywhere-and he's right behind her, pounding down the uneven pavement like the damn devil was on their heels.

The buzz twists into a bone deep shake, and oh shit she thinks she knows-

It happens so fast she can't react. Castiel grabs her tightly by the wrist, she feels a slick dislocation of her shoulder, and then she's bodily hauled through a doorway that may or may not have actually contained a door until Castiel had slammed into it.

He's got her pulled in close, clutched tight to his chest and hisses in her ear, "Do not move."

Ruby thinks of statues and stillness and the fact that she can feel the runaway beat of his heart on her back. Vessel's heart. Something.

She counts heartbeats, gets to nine before there's a sense of pressure pushing in on all sides, makes her sink to the floor with her hands clapped to her ears and Castiel's hand is over her mouth to stop her from screaming 'cause that sound like knives on bone in her head and in her heart.

His eyes are open wide and impossible blue and she's twisting in his grip and that's when the sound stops, her ears ring with silence.

Oh fuck.

The light is weak and doesn't go far. That doesn't stop the shadow shape of mammoth wings from flaring across the floors and wall.

"Castiel-"

"Be still."

Ruby swallows hard. Castiel she knows; his thunderstorm scent and the way his voice dips with his moods and the way his mouth curls down when he's frustrated and tired and that's the angel she's comfortable with.

The one outside, the one she can't even see, is horrifying. She's cringing in her own skin from the massive presence and her stomach's bottoming out somewhere around her feet. Everything in her is telling her to run. It's like being turned inside out of yourself and laid bare, salt on the wounds.

In her ear, Castiel growls one word, a name: "Zachariah."