Fic: Season of Mists (Supernatural) [1/1]
Author: girlupnorth
Pairings: Castiel/Ruby
Rating: strong R
Length: ~3,400 words
Spoilers: including 4.10 Heaven & Hell; takes place between 4.4 and 4.9
Warnings: blasphemy, light bdsm
Credit where credit's due: I'd say it's all novin_ha's fault, but really it's about 50/50, and the theology's all mine.
What I didn't know from season 4 - the only one I've seen -, I found from wikipedia and good people, and/or made up. The title comes from John Keats' Ode to Autumn via Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
Many thanks to novin_ha for the beta, and many apologies to everyone who got caught up in my writing process.
Dedicated to: novin_ha, the one and only (♥) and her mad enabling skills.
ETA 10/31/09: * For Psyche, a wonderful sequel by novin_ha, click here.
* For the Korean translation of this story by tulip0813, click here.
* For the third part, 99 by novin_ha, click here.
Season of Mists
Life used to be so much easier when she was possessing living humans.
It was a comfortable arrangement; she would come and go as she pleased, leaving the body’s owner to perform such tedious functions as eating, sleeping and showering. She never had to worry about places to sleep or money, either.
Ruby’s new hideout is an almost-pleasant hotel room with its own bathroom and a view over a busy street, and she pays for it with money stolen from a guy on whom Sam practiced his silent exorcising. It’s in a semi-large town; she figured she’d be less likely to be found amidst thousands of people than in the middle of nowhere. Even still, she puts up the old charms and defences to keep away her enemies; she’s not going to be returned to hell without a fight.
It’s been two days since Ruby left the Winchesters in Bumfuck, End-of-the-US, when she comes back to her room to find her protective spells broken, and an angel standing by the wall.
*
The angels left the Earth long before she was born, and Ruby has never encountered one, neither as a human nor as a demon. Lilith has, though, and after all those centuries she is still terrified of the killer fuckers with not one thought of their own, as she is wont to call them.
As for Ruby, when the doors shut themselves closed behind her, and the lock turns with a click - even though she still holds the key in her hand, she realizes that never before has she come close to knowing what fear is.
When she was first killed, all she could focus on was not the hellhound's teeth on her throat, but the annoying smell of the flowers outside her house. Now, the angel glances at her, and suddenly she can’t think of anything but the clear blue of his eyes; psychology has probably made up a name for this sensation of unnatural focus by now.
“What are you waiting for? Just kill me already,” Ruby says after a minute or so of silence.
“I have not come here to kill you,” the angel replies, and then adds in a tone that bears no questioning, “You are going to help us.”
*
Ruby sits down at the table, but the angel still doesn’t move. She notices that except for her spells, nothing in the room has changed place. She doubts that this is because the angel is concerned with her - a demon's privacy.
"Help you," she repeats.
“There is a seal in Wilmer, Texas, one of those six hundred that Lilith is trying to open,” he says. “You will go there and destroy it. You won’t tell anybody, not the Winchesters, not Lilith.”
If he weren't an angel, she'd be fighting him right now. As it is, she only asks,
“Why me?”
“Your kind seems to have secured that seal. Only a demon can go near it," he explains.
"But why me? There are millions of other demons on Earth," Ruby protests.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” he says. “It is in your best interest to do what I say.”
“Why, because I hate Lilith?”
“Because if I destroy you, there will be no coming back,” he says simply. “No climbing out of Hell through lies and double-crossings. Just oblivion.”
*
There is no seal in Wilmer, Texas.
There is only a well with an old enchantment put on it, one that might be a seal, and the place is open to all kinds of beings, not only demons. If it had any significance in the greater scheme of things, Castiel would have cleansed it the moment he became aware of its existence.
As it is, the demon’s succeeding with the task is of no importance at all, other than to determine to whom her allegiance belongs.
Castiel is not entirely certain if involving a demon in Heaven’s business is the most advisable move at this stage, but then, she has already become so close to the Winchesters that it might prove crucial to have a handle on her. And it is true that there are paths that neither angels nor humans are able to walk, and on those she might be of use.
The demon does complete her task, and quite skillfully at that. Emboldened by her success, she actually dares behave defiant towards him during their next meeting. This mission is slightly more important than the test he had her carry out.
“What am I now, on Heaven’s payroll?” she asks, putting her arms across her chest. “I’ve got my own stuff to attend to.”
“This takes precedence over any of your own… stuff.”
“And what obligation do I have to Heaven, anyway?” she continues, as if he hasn’t spoken at all. “I severed all the ties when I sold my soul.”
Instead of answering, Castiel gives her a prolonged look. The room grows brighter, the radio stops broadcasting news and turns to static, and the demon shields her eyes, unable to withstand the suggestion of his power.
It only took two thousand years for the humans to forget what could be expected of angels; the demons would probably remember even if it had been ten times longer than that. And Castiel does enjoy the fear on the demon's face; probably too much, he realizes. Certainly, she is nothing compared to him in God’s eyes; but pride is a dangerous thing in an angel, he remembers that all too well.
“I told you already: it is to your own benefit to help us stop the Apocalypse,” he says, composing himself. “When we will have won, the demon kind will be suffering in Hell for the rest of eternity.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“And if Hell wins-“
“That is not going to happen.”
“-Lilith will take care of me herself. You are right, I am absolutely screwed.”
Castiel grimaces slightly at her word choice. The conversation wearies him; he supposes it’s good enough that she stopped protesting.
“You’ve made your own bed,” he reminds her, and disappears.
*
It’s at some point between her second and third mission when Ruby begins to consider her situation.
He’s not going to kill her in near future, she figures. As long as she follows his orders and is of use to Heaven, she should be safe.
It pisses her off.
That he is right, and her working for Heaven makes certain sense, pisses her off too.
Still, there might be ways to use the situation to her own benefit, Ruby decides. It's always good to have an "in" on the other side, and she suppose that she could try to get the angel to trust her. Inhabiting a human body has certain influence on how one thinks, she’d be the first one to know.
He wears a male body, and Ruby has always been good with men; and angels do have feelings, despite what some might say.
He tells her to bring him some demon-killing artifacts, similar to her knife, and comes to collect them before she has had time to work on the task.
"You don't just find these things on the streets, you know," she says, when the angel expresses his disappointment. "I located one in St. Louis, but I need half a day just to get there."
"Maybe you're not trying hard enough," he replies.
Ruby remembers that she wanted to seem cooperative, and bites back a mouthful that would probably send her straight into abyss.
"I'm doing my best," she says, and digs some notes out of the pile of papers lying on the table. "I've made a list of places where these blades can be found, if you wanted me to look for more of them." She hands the piece of paper to the angel, brushing her hand by his arm in the process. He glances at her, but takes the note without any comments. "I'd rather not leave the US, though."
"It won't be necessary," he says, turning the paper over in his hands. "We have agents outside this continent."
He takes off a few minutes later, without as much as a word of thanks. Ruby rolls her eyes.
*
"These kill the human hosts as well as the demons," the demon says upon giving him the blades: two daggers and a small knife.
"I know."
Castiel's touch makes the artifacts disappear from this plane, travel through time and space to places where they are looked for with urgency. He wonders if the demon realizes that her participation in obtaining them was not crucial in the slightest. She does not seem stupid; it would be unwise to underestimate her so. However, if she is aware how much of a fool's errands these are, she hasn't mentioned it yet, either afraid of him, or plotting some scheme of her own. Both seem plausible.
"Doesn't it bother you?" she asks. "I would've thought that angels are supposed to go to all lengths to protect humans."
"It is always unfortunate when we need to kill humans," he says slowly. "And we only do it if it cannot be avoided." He looks at the demon, who's watching him closely from her place by the table. She's not wearing her jacket today, only a low cut shirt and a pendant on a long chain, falling right into her cleaveage. "Why? Does killing people bother you?"
"Maybe. A little," she says. "I'm not going to go around slaughtering them just because I'm a demon."
"Is this why you taught Sam Winchester to dab into black magic and exorcisms?" he asks with genuine curiosity.
The demon is startled. "You know about that?"
"We do protect humans, even if we don't always intervene," Castiel says. "When we learned how you endanger Sam's soul, some of my brothers wanted to see you dead."
"Why didn't you kill me, then?"
"Because God wished otherwise," he says.
He would like to see the demon awed by this revelation, but she smirks instead. "Oh. That."
He was going to stop with the displays of power, now that they both know where they are standing, but this remark angers him. The demon's eyes go black and she has to try to catch a breath, as a flash of pure energy ripples through the room. "Don't presume to make jokes about God," he says.
She turns her eyes away. "I..."
"No. Enough," he says. "Now. You will go looking for a demon named Minoson. He is supposed to have worked with Lilith, but they parted ways. You will find out what he knows about the seals and the Apocalypse, and you will report it all back to me. Understood?"
She nods.
"Good," Castiel says, and disappears.
*
In the next couple of weeks, Ruby finds and talks to Minoson, now running a small casino in Reno. Then she talks to Vetis, to Cresil, and to some others, smaller in rank.
"Lilith hasn't told anyone which seals she is going to break," she tells the angel. "I'm beginning to doubt that she knew it then."
"We're sure she took her time to devise this plan," he says. "Someone will know something. You just have to find the right demon."
He looks and sounds tired. It's as good a moment as any, Ruby decides. She reaches out and begins to run her hand down the angel's shoulder in slow, careful strokes.
"You should take some rest," she says. The angel tenses, but allows her to continue to touch him for a while. Only when Ruby's fingers close on the knot of his tie does he take her hand and, not ungently, put it away.
She expects a "you shouldn't", some confusion, maybe even anger. Instead, the angel rises and turns towards the door.
"You haven't told anyone you are staying here, have you?"
Puzzled, Ruby shakes her head. "Why?"
"There's a demon standing behind the door," he says. "Take cover."
She barely has time to dive behind the bed, when the angel blasts the door open. Ruby hears a scream, and the sound of a body tumbling. Then, for a moment, the room is filled with light too bright for her to bear.
"Do you recognize him?" the angel asks. Ruby rises, dusts off her pants, and comes to the middle of the room, where a motionless body is lying. The man is rather non-descript, of slight built and clad in greyish clothes, but Ruby recognizes him by an earring on his left earlobe.
"I think I saw him when I talked to Vetis," she says. The angel nods. He makes a gesture with his hand, and the body is gone. Then he closes the door.
"What-" begins Ruby, but the angel interrupts her.
"I sent the human back to his homeplace. He's still alive," he says. "I'd suggest you move out. It might be dangerous for you to stay here."
"Move out," she repeats, incredulous. "And that's it?" The angel tilts his head in surprise, as she goes on, "It's your fault that anyone came looking for me in here, and you tell me to move out? And when they find me again, what are you going to say? That it couldn't be prevented?"
"You are ungrateful," he says, irked.
"Oh, spare me," she snarls. "What do I have to be grateful for? That I'm making everyone's hit lists now that I'm Heaven's bitch? Please."
The angel comes closer, until he is standing mere centimetres from her, invading her personal space. He is enraged, and Ruby thinks again that it's not an unattractive look on him.
"You are forgetting yourself," he says.
"And what are you going to do, huh?" she asks. "Kill me? Hurt me? Smite me?" She grabs his hand and places it on her ass. "I'd like to see you do that."
The expression on the angel's face changes: now he is more amused than angry.
"You would, wouldn't you?" His hand has yet to move. Then he pulls her towards him and they kiss, almost violently. Ruby presses her body against his, and starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. The angel pulls off her blouse, and tosses it onto the chair; the rest of their clothes follows, as they make their way to the bed. Ruby lies down on her back, and tries to pull the angel onto her, but he stops, eyeing her carefully for a moment.
"Turn around," he says. Ruby raises her eyebrows, but does as she is told.
He slowly runs his hand down her spine, from between the shoulder blades to her ass. Ruby catches her breath in anticipation.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks, wondering if he's going to tease her all night. Then the angel's hand comes down on her ass with a loud smack, and Ruby gasps.
He leans over her, and whispers into her ear, "Is that good enough?"
Ruby turns her head slightly to look at him and laughs.
"Not quite. Try harder."
He does. Ruby gasps, again and again, clutching the pillow tightly. "That's better - better - oh, good," she manages.
"Is it?"
"Oh, just fuck me already," she says, all out of breath.
She comes with the angel's hand between her thighs, and his mouth on the back of her neck; he follows moments later, pushing her hard against the bed.
*
"You are much too lenient with those savages, Castiel," Uriel says when they go back to Heaven after the failure to stop the rising of the demon called Samhain. "If we just wiped this continent out of existence, if we had done it ages ago, we'd be spared most of our present troubles."
There are many reasons why Heaven is not a democracy, and Uriel is probably one of them. Castiel holds onto the belief that being assigned Uriel as a partner in his earthly endeavours has a point, but so far, he fails to see one.
"If such was God's will, Earth would have been destroyed aeons ago," he says. "And yet it still exists, despite all of humanity's sins."
Uriel winces, but doesn't say another word.
Castiel thinks about this conversation when he next comes to see the demon. She has lost her usefulness to Heaven's case when she has been followed to her hideout by that demon Castiel exorcised. If Uriel knew, he would kill her without a second thought; and even Castiel is under no obligation not to leave her to her own devices, now.
The demon looks surprised to see him back that soon, but after a moment she brightens up and extends a hand as an invitation to join her where she's lying curled up on the bed.
"Not this time," he says, even though the idea is tempting.
"What, is it wrong now?" she asks, stretching out on the bed. Castiel follows the line of her throat, draws in his breath, and closes eyes.
The angels can and do engage in physical contacts, but they are hardly driven by sex the way humans - and demons - are. Dwelling in a human body has more impact over his behaviour than Castiel would have supposed; then again, it would be an outright lie to attribute the night he spent with the demon to human body's impulses only.
"There are demons coming for you," he says, looking at her again. She jumps right up at this information.
He transports her out of that hotel room and to entirely different part of the country. Then he leaves the demon to find herself new lodgings, and returns to take care of the demons that have been looking for her.
"Were they working for Lilith?" she asks when Castiel comes back.
"They could have, but I doubt that," he says. "You must have stumbled onto something else."
The demon shrugs, and then narrows her eyes. "There was some talk," she says slowly. "About a girl in Ohio who's... a psychic, I think. Her name's Hanna, or maybe Anna. They wanted to get to her."
"And you didn't tell me?"
God, let it be a coincidence, he prays. There must be a thousand psychic girls named Anna whom Heaven does not keep tabs on in Ohio, let that be one of them. Let Heaven not send the soldiers against one who used to be their own.
"I didn't pay attention," she says and shrugs again. Then, apparently noticing the look on Castiel's face, she asks, "Why, do you know anything about that?"
"It's none of your business," he replies.
The demon chuckles, then rises from her place on the bed and gets into his lap. "It's all of my business," she says, and kisses him. "Tell me."
"Stop this," Castiel says with some conviction, though not as much as he'd have wanted.
"You dragged me into this. You should have the decency to explain," the demon says, unbuckling his belt, and slipping her hand into his pants.
He shows her which of them has the grounds to speak of decency; he does so repeatedly and with much satisfaction.
*
The angel tells her to lie low and attract no attention to herself, and then he takes off, without spilling any beans.
Naturally, Ruby begins to look for answers on her own.
She doesn't find out a lot. The girl's name is, apparently, Milton, and she's a psycho as well as psychic, locked in some hospital. She doesn't know why the demons are so interested in that girl: she's hardly the only psychic out there.
"If it's of any matter, it will be taken care of," the angel says, when Ruby tries to pester him again.
"Like you took care of me?"
The look he gives her is surprisingly cold, and Ruby feels put off.
"You're asking too many questions."
"You told me to ask questions."
"You might have asked enough," the angel says. He leaves Ruby on her own that night, alone and angry, and more than just a little horny.
The very next morning she grabs a few things and sets out to find the Winchesters, and to hand the psychic girl over to them.
Taking Heaven's business out of the angels' hands won't do her any harm, she figures. She's damned already, it can't get any worse.
She learns the hard way how wrong she is to think so.
---
Follow the link for a sequel by novin_ha: Psyche
Pairings: Castiel/Ruby
Rating: strong R
Length: ~3,400 words
Spoilers: including 4.10 Heaven & Hell; takes place between 4.4 and 4.9
Warnings: blasphemy, light bdsm
Credit where credit's due: I'd say it's all novin_ha's fault, but really it's about 50/50, and the theology's all mine.
What I didn't know from season 4 - the only one I've seen -, I found from wikipedia and good people, and/or made up. The title comes from John Keats' Ode to Autumn via Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.
Many thanks to novin_ha for the beta, and many apologies to everyone who got caught up in my writing process.
Dedicated to: novin_ha, the one and only (♥) and her mad enabling skills.
ETA 10/31/09: * For Psyche, a wonderful sequel by novin_ha, click here.
* For the Korean translation of this story by tulip0813, click here.
* For the third part, 99 by novin_ha, click here.
Season of Mists
Life used to be so much easier when she was possessing living humans.
It was a comfortable arrangement; she would come and go as she pleased, leaving the body’s owner to perform such tedious functions as eating, sleeping and showering. She never had to worry about places to sleep or money, either.
Ruby’s new hideout is an almost-pleasant hotel room with its own bathroom and a view over a busy street, and she pays for it with money stolen from a guy on whom Sam practiced his silent exorcising. It’s in a semi-large town; she figured she’d be less likely to be found amidst thousands of people than in the middle of nowhere. Even still, she puts up the old charms and defences to keep away her enemies; she’s not going to be returned to hell without a fight.
It’s been two days since Ruby left the Winchesters in Bumfuck, End-of-the-US, when she comes back to her room to find her protective spells broken, and an angel standing by the wall.
*
The angels left the Earth long before she was born, and Ruby has never encountered one, neither as a human nor as a demon. Lilith has, though, and after all those centuries she is still terrified of the killer fuckers with not one thought of their own, as she is wont to call them.
As for Ruby, when the doors shut themselves closed behind her, and the lock turns with a click - even though she still holds the key in her hand, she realizes that never before has she come close to knowing what fear is.
When she was first killed, all she could focus on was not the hellhound's teeth on her throat, but the annoying smell of the flowers outside her house. Now, the angel glances at her, and suddenly she can’t think of anything but the clear blue of his eyes; psychology has probably made up a name for this sensation of unnatural focus by now.
“What are you waiting for? Just kill me already,” Ruby says after a minute or so of silence.
“I have not come here to kill you,” the angel replies, and then adds in a tone that bears no questioning, “You are going to help us.”
*
Ruby sits down at the table, but the angel still doesn’t move. She notices that except for her spells, nothing in the room has changed place. She doubts that this is because the angel is concerned with her - a demon's privacy.
"Help you," she repeats.
“There is a seal in Wilmer, Texas, one of those six hundred that Lilith is trying to open,” he says. “You will go there and destroy it. You won’t tell anybody, not the Winchesters, not Lilith.”
If he weren't an angel, she'd be fighting him right now. As it is, she only asks,
“Why me?”
“Your kind seems to have secured that seal. Only a demon can go near it," he explains.
"But why me? There are millions of other demons on Earth," Ruby protests.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” he says. “It is in your best interest to do what I say.”
“Why, because I hate Lilith?”
“Because if I destroy you, there will be no coming back,” he says simply. “No climbing out of Hell through lies and double-crossings. Just oblivion.”
*
There is no seal in Wilmer, Texas.
There is only a well with an old enchantment put on it, one that might be a seal, and the place is open to all kinds of beings, not only demons. If it had any significance in the greater scheme of things, Castiel would have cleansed it the moment he became aware of its existence.
As it is, the demon’s succeeding with the task is of no importance at all, other than to determine to whom her allegiance belongs.
Castiel is not entirely certain if involving a demon in Heaven’s business is the most advisable move at this stage, but then, she has already become so close to the Winchesters that it might prove crucial to have a handle on her. And it is true that there are paths that neither angels nor humans are able to walk, and on those she might be of use.
The demon does complete her task, and quite skillfully at that. Emboldened by her success, she actually dares behave defiant towards him during their next meeting. This mission is slightly more important than the test he had her carry out.
“What am I now, on Heaven’s payroll?” she asks, putting her arms across her chest. “I’ve got my own stuff to attend to.”
“This takes precedence over any of your own… stuff.”
“And what obligation do I have to Heaven, anyway?” she continues, as if he hasn’t spoken at all. “I severed all the ties when I sold my soul.”
Instead of answering, Castiel gives her a prolonged look. The room grows brighter, the radio stops broadcasting news and turns to static, and the demon shields her eyes, unable to withstand the suggestion of his power.
It only took two thousand years for the humans to forget what could be expected of angels; the demons would probably remember even if it had been ten times longer than that. And Castiel does enjoy the fear on the demon's face; probably too much, he realizes. Certainly, she is nothing compared to him in God’s eyes; but pride is a dangerous thing in an angel, he remembers that all too well.
“I told you already: it is to your own benefit to help us stop the Apocalypse,” he says, composing himself. “When we will have won, the demon kind will be suffering in Hell for the rest of eternity.”
She is quiet for a moment.
“And if Hell wins-“
“That is not going to happen.”
“-Lilith will take care of me herself. You are right, I am absolutely screwed.”
Castiel grimaces slightly at her word choice. The conversation wearies him; he supposes it’s good enough that she stopped protesting.
“You’ve made your own bed,” he reminds her, and disappears.
*
It’s at some point between her second and third mission when Ruby begins to consider her situation.
He’s not going to kill her in near future, she figures. As long as she follows his orders and is of use to Heaven, she should be safe.
It pisses her off.
That he is right, and her working for Heaven makes certain sense, pisses her off too.
Still, there might be ways to use the situation to her own benefit, Ruby decides. It's always good to have an "in" on the other side, and she suppose that she could try to get the angel to trust her. Inhabiting a human body has certain influence on how one thinks, she’d be the first one to know.
He wears a male body, and Ruby has always been good with men; and angels do have feelings, despite what some might say.
He tells her to bring him some demon-killing artifacts, similar to her knife, and comes to collect them before she has had time to work on the task.
"You don't just find these things on the streets, you know," she says, when the angel expresses his disappointment. "I located one in St. Louis, but I need half a day just to get there."
"Maybe you're not trying hard enough," he replies.
Ruby remembers that she wanted to seem cooperative, and bites back a mouthful that would probably send her straight into abyss.
"I'm doing my best," she says, and digs some notes out of the pile of papers lying on the table. "I've made a list of places where these blades can be found, if you wanted me to look for more of them." She hands the piece of paper to the angel, brushing her hand by his arm in the process. He glances at her, but takes the note without any comments. "I'd rather not leave the US, though."
"It won't be necessary," he says, turning the paper over in his hands. "We have agents outside this continent."
He takes off a few minutes later, without as much as a word of thanks. Ruby rolls her eyes.
*
"These kill the human hosts as well as the demons," the demon says upon giving him the blades: two daggers and a small knife.
"I know."
Castiel's touch makes the artifacts disappear from this plane, travel through time and space to places where they are looked for with urgency. He wonders if the demon realizes that her participation in obtaining them was not crucial in the slightest. She does not seem stupid; it would be unwise to underestimate her so. However, if she is aware how much of a fool's errands these are, she hasn't mentioned it yet, either afraid of him, or plotting some scheme of her own. Both seem plausible.
"Doesn't it bother you?" she asks. "I would've thought that angels are supposed to go to all lengths to protect humans."
"It is always unfortunate when we need to kill humans," he says slowly. "And we only do it if it cannot be avoided." He looks at the demon, who's watching him closely from her place by the table. She's not wearing her jacket today, only a low cut shirt and a pendant on a long chain, falling right into her cleaveage. "Why? Does killing people bother you?"
"Maybe. A little," she says. "I'm not going to go around slaughtering them just because I'm a demon."
"Is this why you taught Sam Winchester to dab into black magic and exorcisms?" he asks with genuine curiosity.
The demon is startled. "You know about that?"
"We do protect humans, even if we don't always intervene," Castiel says. "When we learned how you endanger Sam's soul, some of my brothers wanted to see you dead."
"Why didn't you kill me, then?"
"Because God wished otherwise," he says.
He would like to see the demon awed by this revelation, but she smirks instead. "Oh. That."
He was going to stop with the displays of power, now that they both know where they are standing, but this remark angers him. The demon's eyes go black and she has to try to catch a breath, as a flash of pure energy ripples through the room. "Don't presume to make jokes about God," he says.
She turns her eyes away. "I..."
"No. Enough," he says. "Now. You will go looking for a demon named Minoson. He is supposed to have worked with Lilith, but they parted ways. You will find out what he knows about the seals and the Apocalypse, and you will report it all back to me. Understood?"
She nods.
"Good," Castiel says, and disappears.
*
In the next couple of weeks, Ruby finds and talks to Minoson, now running a small casino in Reno. Then she talks to Vetis, to Cresil, and to some others, smaller in rank.
"Lilith hasn't told anyone which seals she is going to break," she tells the angel. "I'm beginning to doubt that she knew it then."
"We're sure she took her time to devise this plan," he says. "Someone will know something. You just have to find the right demon."
He looks and sounds tired. It's as good a moment as any, Ruby decides. She reaches out and begins to run her hand down the angel's shoulder in slow, careful strokes.
"You should take some rest," she says. The angel tenses, but allows her to continue to touch him for a while. Only when Ruby's fingers close on the knot of his tie does he take her hand and, not ungently, put it away.
She expects a "you shouldn't", some confusion, maybe even anger. Instead, the angel rises and turns towards the door.
"You haven't told anyone you are staying here, have you?"
Puzzled, Ruby shakes her head. "Why?"
"There's a demon standing behind the door," he says. "Take cover."
She barely has time to dive behind the bed, when the angel blasts the door open. Ruby hears a scream, and the sound of a body tumbling. Then, for a moment, the room is filled with light too bright for her to bear.
"Do you recognize him?" the angel asks. Ruby rises, dusts off her pants, and comes to the middle of the room, where a motionless body is lying. The man is rather non-descript, of slight built and clad in greyish clothes, but Ruby recognizes him by an earring on his left earlobe.
"I think I saw him when I talked to Vetis," she says. The angel nods. He makes a gesture with his hand, and the body is gone. Then he closes the door.
"What-" begins Ruby, but the angel interrupts her.
"I sent the human back to his homeplace. He's still alive," he says. "I'd suggest you move out. It might be dangerous for you to stay here."
"Move out," she repeats, incredulous. "And that's it?" The angel tilts his head in surprise, as she goes on, "It's your fault that anyone came looking for me in here, and you tell me to move out? And when they find me again, what are you going to say? That it couldn't be prevented?"
"You are ungrateful," he says, irked.
"Oh, spare me," she snarls. "What do I have to be grateful for? That I'm making everyone's hit lists now that I'm Heaven's bitch? Please."
The angel comes closer, until he is standing mere centimetres from her, invading her personal space. He is enraged, and Ruby thinks again that it's not an unattractive look on him.
"You are forgetting yourself," he says.
"And what are you going to do, huh?" she asks. "Kill me? Hurt me? Smite me?" She grabs his hand and places it on her ass. "I'd like to see you do that."
The expression on the angel's face changes: now he is more amused than angry.
"You would, wouldn't you?" His hand has yet to move. Then he pulls her towards him and they kiss, almost violently. Ruby presses her body against his, and starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. The angel pulls off her blouse, and tosses it onto the chair; the rest of their clothes follows, as they make their way to the bed. Ruby lies down on her back, and tries to pull the angel onto her, but he stops, eyeing her carefully for a moment.
"Turn around," he says. Ruby raises her eyebrows, but does as she is told.
He slowly runs his hand down her spine, from between the shoulder blades to her ass. Ruby catches her breath in anticipation.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks, wondering if he's going to tease her all night. Then the angel's hand comes down on her ass with a loud smack, and Ruby gasps.
He leans over her, and whispers into her ear, "Is that good enough?"
Ruby turns her head slightly to look at him and laughs.
"Not quite. Try harder."
He does. Ruby gasps, again and again, clutching the pillow tightly. "That's better - better - oh, good," she manages.
"Is it?"
"Oh, just fuck me already," she says, all out of breath.
She comes with the angel's hand between her thighs, and his mouth on the back of her neck; he follows moments later, pushing her hard against the bed.
*
"You are much too lenient with those savages, Castiel," Uriel says when they go back to Heaven after the failure to stop the rising of the demon called Samhain. "If we just wiped this continent out of existence, if we had done it ages ago, we'd be spared most of our present troubles."
There are many reasons why Heaven is not a democracy, and Uriel is probably one of them. Castiel holds onto the belief that being assigned Uriel as a partner in his earthly endeavours has a point, but so far, he fails to see one.
"If such was God's will, Earth would have been destroyed aeons ago," he says. "And yet it still exists, despite all of humanity's sins."
Uriel winces, but doesn't say another word.
Castiel thinks about this conversation when he next comes to see the demon. She has lost her usefulness to Heaven's case when she has been followed to her hideout by that demon Castiel exorcised. If Uriel knew, he would kill her without a second thought; and even Castiel is under no obligation not to leave her to her own devices, now.
The demon looks surprised to see him back that soon, but after a moment she brightens up and extends a hand as an invitation to join her where she's lying curled up on the bed.
"Not this time," he says, even though the idea is tempting.
"What, is it wrong now?" she asks, stretching out on the bed. Castiel follows the line of her throat, draws in his breath, and closes eyes.
The angels can and do engage in physical contacts, but they are hardly driven by sex the way humans - and demons - are. Dwelling in a human body has more impact over his behaviour than Castiel would have supposed; then again, it would be an outright lie to attribute the night he spent with the demon to human body's impulses only.
"There are demons coming for you," he says, looking at her again. She jumps right up at this information.
He transports her out of that hotel room and to entirely different part of the country. Then he leaves the demon to find herself new lodgings, and returns to take care of the demons that have been looking for her.
"Were they working for Lilith?" she asks when Castiel comes back.
"They could have, but I doubt that," he says. "You must have stumbled onto something else."
The demon shrugs, and then narrows her eyes. "There was some talk," she says slowly. "About a girl in Ohio who's... a psychic, I think. Her name's Hanna, or maybe Anna. They wanted to get to her."
"And you didn't tell me?"
God, let it be a coincidence, he prays. There must be a thousand psychic girls named Anna whom Heaven does not keep tabs on in Ohio, let that be one of them. Let Heaven not send the soldiers against one who used to be their own.
"I didn't pay attention," she says and shrugs again. Then, apparently noticing the look on Castiel's face, she asks, "Why, do you know anything about that?"
"It's none of your business," he replies.
The demon chuckles, then rises from her place on the bed and gets into his lap. "It's all of my business," she says, and kisses him. "Tell me."
"Stop this," Castiel says with some conviction, though not as much as he'd have wanted.
"You dragged me into this. You should have the decency to explain," the demon says, unbuckling his belt, and slipping her hand into his pants.
He shows her which of them has the grounds to speak of decency; he does so repeatedly and with much satisfaction.
*
The angel tells her to lie low and attract no attention to herself, and then he takes off, without spilling any beans.
Naturally, Ruby begins to look for answers on her own.
She doesn't find out a lot. The girl's name is, apparently, Milton, and she's a psycho as well as psychic, locked in some hospital. She doesn't know why the demons are so interested in that girl: she's hardly the only psychic out there.
"If it's of any matter, it will be taken care of," the angel says, when Ruby tries to pester him again.
"Like you took care of me?"
The look he gives her is surprisingly cold, and Ruby feels put off.
"You're asking too many questions."
"You told me to ask questions."
"You might have asked enough," the angel says. He leaves Ruby on her own that night, alone and angry, and more than just a little horny.
The very next morning she grabs a few things and sets out to find the Winchesters, and to hand the psychic girl over to them.
Taking Heaven's business out of the angels' hands won't do her any harm, she figures. She's damned already, it can't get any worse.
She learns the hard way how wrong she is to think so.
---
Follow the link for a sequel by novin_ha: Psyche