notes: D: horror show. I have a plan. This one's rather short, but I haven't updated in a while and I didn't want people to think I've abandoned it. ;-;
…
vi.
On the forty-third day and still waiting for a sign, Castiel says something is wrong in a very small voice, like he's afraid of being overheard.
"You've said that before." It's all the same, anyway. Ruby's thinks it might be limbo, purgatory, or if she's really unlucky some brimstone version of Groundhog Day in Hell. "You're wasting your daily word quota."
Ashy dirt holds her footprints perfectly, leaving a long trail of nothing behind her. She curls her toes in it and thinks she'd give her other shoe for a shower. Or some gum, because the inside of her mouth feels like she'd been chewing lint. Overwhelming horror has been put on hold, it seems. They might be two steps from dead, but she'd kill for a mint.
"It's different." Castiel answers, clear as mud, picking up the conversation thread sometime later. Ruby squints at him- are you serious? - and decides that yes, he is and that's all he's going to say.
"If you don't start talking to me," Ruby says evenly, "I'm going to start making things up."
"You will anyway." Castiel's staring hard at the pitted asphalt that's become their yellow brick road. Highway through Hell. The light's gone flat and hazy, filtered through ever present smoke and dust. There's wide open nothing around them.
The corners of her mouth quirk up, and she can almost forget that he's going to drag her down with him. Blaze of glory and all. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?"
She watches that go through the penny drop and the frown start to deepen, eyes narrowed down into slits.
"I am not having sex with you." He informs her, all solemn and relentless intensity, and it's such a surprise that Ruby barks out a laugh so dry she feels blood bloom in her throat.
..
All in all, she's not shocked when it starts raining in great, drowning torrents. The water is yellowish, sulfurous almost and leaves a soapy residue on everything. It's making her want to crawl out of her (not her) skin just to get away. "It's official," Ruby tells Castiel. "God hates me."
"Probably." Castiel says in all certainty, not making any attempt to care. He's hunkered down in his coat as far as he can go; he looks small and soaked down to the bone, like a cat that's been suddenly dunked into a pool.
Breathing's hard, suffocating, and it's a good thing she's already dead (technically) but she doesn't know about the poor sucker that Castiel's riding, or even if he has to breathe. Unspoken, they put their heads down and trudge while the water rises and Ruby thinks about floods and how they're Ark-less. She doesn't even have two shoes, let alone two of everything else.
The water's up to their ankles when she risks a sideways look at him, bowed under the weight of water and rain dripping down his jaw and thinks what in Hell am I doing and I'm doing something wrong it's not right at all because nothing has felt right since day one. Like they've been knocked off course and only Castiel can see the signs.
Maybe that's what he means when he says that something's wrong. Maybe he feels it, agent of fate and all, that somewhere along the line somebody zigged when they should have zagged and it fucked the whole system.
"What do you think-"she begins when something black and coiled slams into her back, drives her down into the ground and greasy water floods her mouth.
For a second she's floating in shock, and when she pushes back is when the fog clears and she's jarred across the rough rock, mud in her eyes and nose and something screaming in her ear. It's a minute before she realizes that it's her screaming. It feels like razors and glass, punching brutally into her back and along her ribs, claws or knives. She couldn't even scream, not with the side of her face scraping ground and herself leaking from the tears in the body.
And then it's gone, and Ruby scrabbles awkwardly forward on her hands and knees until she can find her feet and stagger up and by then Castiel's got both hands on it, and it's twisting around in its own skin. There's teeth fucking everywhere on it, surfacing along smoky flesh and gnashing soundlessly.
"Ruby." Unspoken: help me.
(and the one on the left was dean and there was blood stained through the dropcloth she covered him in)
"RUBY." Castiel was graceless in this fight, he's just trying to hold on, and it takes Ruby a fuzzy minute to realize that it's trying to get away from him. And Castiel is just as desperate to keep it from doing so. It's shredding his hands, palms cut deep and there's blood mixing with the rain and it's just howling.
"Shut it up!" She screams it, her jaw feels unhinged and panic chases the pain. "Just shut it the fuck up!" It can't get away, can't. She wants the knife. Even more so when Castiel clenches his hands in the soft, ink shine flesh and something bright begins to burn through the rain.
It (no no no) makes another lunge towards Ruby, bristling teeth jutting from all the curves of its face, then twists halfway and throws its weight at Castiel. They both went down, a hellhound on top of an angel and Ruby remembers with vivid clarity the part of Castiel's story- how hellhounds pulled one of his brothers apart and burned them all down- when the air snaps with a sudden pressure and all but shoves her down and there's nothing but a hot hot heat and hard, incandescent light.
(burned them down as they all scattered into ash)
Ruby feels like she's burning all over again, whites out and-
Castiel I'm so sorr
-wakes up, gasping, in a white and gold room.