Spoilers: Series. Season 4.
Notes: For this chapter I wanted banter. It's like they pointed at me and laughed. Psh! Thank you so much for reviewing! I love knowing what everyone thinks. Especially since I wanted to take this chapter in an entirely different direction.

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v.

Forty days after the last Seal broke Ruby asks, "Do you miss them?" She's not really expecting an answer, doesn't even really want one 'cause what if his reply was no, but they've been holed up in what used to be a Dairy Queen for the last five hours and there's only so many times you can check the store room for fries.

"Yes."

It's ambiguous, but she'll take it. Ruby rolls over to her side and levels a look over at Castiel, who is currently flat on his back and staring up through a hole in the ceiling. Maybe there's such a thing as heavenly wi-fi, and he's phoning home. His fingers are laced together over his stomach, casual and lax, his profile tilted slightly. She watches his adam's apple bob as he swallows, follows the line of his throat up and waits patiently.

Outside, something dark and smoky whips through empty streets, but it doesn't approach the building. They can't put up wards or salt, because there's not supposed to be anything left but the wandering dead and demons. If it comes to a fight, it's all Ruby. Castiel's been downgraded to moral support since angel-mojo is out of the question, and he kind of fails hard at that.

"Why do you ask?"

When Castiel asks a question, she's learned he's usually demanding an explanation along with it. The apocalypse has made him edgy.

"Because," She's up and pacing by then, glaring out broken windows and kicking aside weather blackened clumps of napkins. There's a dead man in back, behind the freezer door; he's weather blackened too, skin spilt and running. He might have been hiding and hoping. She didn't tell Castiel.

He's still lying there when she prowls back.

"Do you?" His voice is hoarse and rough from disuse; he's a little rough from disuse. It hits her solidly in the middle, the ragged sound of his words, the horrible searching question. Tell me you miss them too, so I know I'm not the only one that remembers what was lost.

She bites her lower lip, poised to run. "I miss the way things used to be."

He huffs something that might have been a laugh. Or a scoff. Either way, she doesn't think he believes her.

Ruby lets it go, because she doesn't know if she's angry at him or at herself. It's a dark and depressing road to go down, anyway. "Whatever. Forget it." And she wants to forget it, let it drop. She bites her bottom lip and stares fixedly out an empty window and listens to the empty quiet out on empty streets. Gone and empty. Everything was, just because Lucifer had to break all of Daddy's toys. Like a kid kicking over sandcastles.

She does desperately want to drop it. But Castiel...he's complicated. And he confuses her, alternating between some species of concern and dismissal. He won't talk to her, she doesn't even know what he was doing when the Seals broke and his precious Dean shuffled on out of his mortal coil.

"Isn't forty supposed to be the magic number?" The light outside is flat and odd, turns everything grey. "Do we get an olive branch? Fuck, how 'bout a redo?"

Castiel 'hn's' but doesn't respond. Ruby's torn between being glad (because she doesn't want to hear 'God has a plan' in any form) and being pissed. And he's still not speaking, not moving.

"Talk to me." Her hands clench into fists, knuckles gone white. "Say something."

"What do you want me to say?"

Ruby wheels on him. "That you know what the fuck is going on! That you-we!-have a plan!" That we're not wandering in circles. That you're not just waiting until God tells you to drop dead. How's the fucking weather? "Just…"

It was that feeling all over again, a throwback from centuries ago when she had been mortal and desperate. An echo of loss, and she didn't know what to do. But Castiel's moving; slowly standing like it's taking every bit of his concentration to do so. Like whatever Zachariah had done was deep and internal and hurting.

She wants to hit him anyway. Hit something just to do something other than duck and run and hide.

"What are we waiting for?" she asks urgently. Feels like something breaking apart in her chest, like loss, because Castiel's just looking at her solemnly, and then tilts his gaze upward.

And that feeling in her chest freezes. It's too much when she remembers his hand warm on her wrist and forty days of walking and fighting beside him, fighting with him. Of saving and being saved. She could stay, chain herself to Castiel and burn out with him or-

"No." Ruby tells him, shaking her head and backing away. Glass crunches underfoot, catches in the bare sole but that's hardly a distraction. "No fucking way."

He just looks so earnest, believable, as if he's not totally insane. "Ruby."

"I'm sick of waiting for your God to save us."

Castiel closes his eyes. "This is faith."

She spits out, "This is stupidity." Runs her hands through her hair in a gesture of pure frustration thought she's itching to smack the faith right out of him.

"It's often confused." Castiel concedes.

Ruby sits down hard in the crooked doorway and rests her forehead on her knees. Thinks of the dried blood on his coat and wide blue eyes and feels everything that ties her to him tighten a little more. This was not faith. She was afraid to put a name to it.

He's so very quiet that she doesn't hear anything until he slides down gingerly by the doorway, not quite touching. "I…can tell you what I know."

"Shoot." She's kind of surprised at the willingness to listen to Castiel and his special brand of crazy, but she doesn't have anything else to do.

When Castiel speaks, his voice is low and deliberate so she understands what he's saying in the dark ruins of the world. The words fall like stones, like tears he never learned how to shed.

How Michael's death burned the ground to glass a hundred miles in all directions.

How Lepha had bared her vessel's teeth and raised a slim hand to beckon her fallen kin closer.

How Eiael had begged forgiveness and unfolded into terrible glory, burning out like a star.

How hellhounds had pulled Pahaliah apart and how his grace had poured out from between their teeth and burned them down as they all scattered into ash.

How this one tried to run and hide and that one tried to beg.

How that one fell and that one didn't and how Raphael took a knee before Lucifer

(hail brother totum tibi subdo me)

and how Anael held the line until there was nothing left to hold onto but faith.

Castiel goes on and on, sometimes falling into a language that wraps around her insides like a fist and clenches. fathersaveushelpusourbrothersoursisters.

When he done and silent, Ruby reaches out uncertainly and touches his knee…for apology or sympathy (from a demon of all things) but he gives another huff of a laugh, the littlest laugh of them all, and this time it's real enough.