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srs2013_r2Word Count: 2 149
Characters: Alastair, Anna Milton, Dean Winchester, Meg, Ruby
Pairings: Anna Milton/Ruby, implied Anna Milton/Dean Winchester
Tags: Canon Divergence Past 4.09, Character Death, Flashing Image, Graphic Violence
Once upon a time, Anna Milton had been the name of the affable local church deacon’s daughter, a bright-spirited, kind-hearted young lady born of miracles, whispered by all who knew her to have great things ahead of her.
(Sometimes, she wondered what any of them might have said if they could see her now; it couldn’t be anything close to flattering, she imagined—what with her having abandoned her tidy Christian lifestyle to consort with a demon.)
A mere five months had passed since the secure mundanity of her ordinary habits had been punctured and subsequently ripped to bloodstained pieces by unwelcome revelations about the supernatural. Already, though, the remnants of memory of that permanently relinquished part of her past seemed to belong to another life altogether. It was difficult to recall a time when she hadn’t spent every waking hour of hers in a moving vehicle or dingy motel room, journeying in intermittent charges across the country with no clear destination in mind.
What was even more unfathomable to her than all that was that, until a handful of weeks ago, she hadn’t known anything of the demon who called herself Ruby.
Now, she was curled up on a stiff mattress, head rested against that same demon’s shoulder, with tangled locks of hair spread around her crown in a fiery bright halo. One arm was wrapped around the brunette’s chest, pulling her close in a fond embrace. Ruby’s breath was deceptively dim, eyelids shut fast despite her being fully awake and aware of all that went on around her; Anna had learned on their first day together that sleep wasn’t a necessity for her kind. With sleep-distorted mumblings, she drew her face even nearer, planting a chaste kiss on slightly parted lips while running a finger through her chestnut hair.
The metallic strains of the opening bars of a pop-rock song, emitted from the phone left in the pocket of one of the many clothing articles strewn across the ground, interrupted the serenity of the moment. Anna grumbled again, mind still half-claimed by slumber, as Ruby sprung away to rummage through wrinkled jackets and pants for the device. “Mama, we all go to hell” droned on in a third repetition before being cut off by a sunny beep and a curt salutation.
“Dean.” The uttering of that name dispelled any remnants of drowsiness from Anna, who sat herself up at attention to listen in on the coming conversation.
“How’s Anna doing?”
“She’s fine. We’re fine.”
“What—”
“Why the hell are you calling—last I checked, Hell and Heaven both’re on your collective asses. Didn’t you send us off so they wouldn’t take in Little Red here?"
“Am I supposed to trust you to keep her safe?”
“Really, still stuck on the whole demon thing? Get over it—Sammy boy has. Look here, she’s alive. Better off than if you two were around. Thought you didn’t care much for her anyways.”
“Alive. That’s not saying much.” Ruby didn’t miss the blatant disregard of her other comment towards his earlier sentiments about her favourite endangered damsel.
Anna was privy to her look of exaggerated exasperation as she continued on. “Look, she’s right here—I’ll get her on the line if you need the reassurance that I haven’t given her up to Alastair or someone.” Turning, she mimed a throwing action, before tossing the phone over to the redhead.
“Hey—Dean?” she greeted after a moment of fumbling around for the device.
“Anna. You okay over there?—Whoa, Sammy, wait one sec. I’m on the line with Anna; calm it."
“I’m doing well… as much as somebody can in this kind of situation. Don’t be so hard on Ruby, please; she’s been a great help. Already saved my life a few times over.”
“Sam—Shit, what? God, fuck, what are you saying? Anna, where are you right now?”
“A small place near Santa Fe, why?”
“Get your stuff together and head over to Idaho, pronto. Look, Sammy and I, we fucked up and you need to get out of there, ASAP.”
“What’s going—”
“Stay safe, okay?”
The dial tone beeped out its unvaryingly repetitive denial of a last few seconds for her to wish the brothers the same.
As Anna placed the phone onto the bedside dresser, Ruby rose again. Having overheard enough of Dean’s warning to infer the meaning correctly, she swept through the room, shifting from spot to spot to gather together their belongings. “We need to get moving. Now.”
A clamourous knock on the door interjected their hasty departure, and a panicked sheen flitted across Ruby’s demeanour.
“Hide,” she hissed, gesturing to the adjacent bathroom. It wasn’t any kind of refuge that would stand up to even the slightest inspection, but nevertheless better than allowing her to simply remain in the open. In spite of that, the knowledge that she was out of sight was of absolutely no relief whatsoever when the insistent thumping halted, replaced with a forceful whoosh of air as the door burst open.
“Speak of the Devil,” Ruby muttered when she noticed who their undesirable visitor was. Alastair had come alone — not that the white-eyed demon actually needed any kind of back-up when he could easily demolish both her and her angel-who-wasn’t on his own.
“You’ve been thinking of me? I’m, ah, flattered.”
“She’s not here. Nothing for you to see, so why don’t you just get out?”
“Heard you were a lying little slut.” He glanced over her, then eyed the locked lavatory door with a knowing smile. “But I’ll deal with you later.” A wave of power exerted effortlessly sent Ruby airborne, then pinned her immobile to a wall as she collided forcefully with its surface. The insubstantial barricade gave way easily to his path, revealing a figure cowering with her back against the wall.
Eyes screwed shut, Anna blurted out a few words in a tongue she didn’t understand—a demonic exorcism, it seemed from the way it momentarily caused a stumble in Alastair’s approach. The Enochian had only a brief affect on him, and recovering nearly immediately, he grabbed hold of her arm in a bone-crushing vice grip.
By the time Ruby was released from the perch, landing in a disordered pile on the ground, the two of them had already vanished away.
Tracking down Anna’s whereabouts was far easier than she had even begun to hope for, a process that left dread churning in Ruby’s stomach. It struck her as ridiculously unlikely that her captors would have completely overlooked the indisputable fact that somebody, whether that was the Winchesters and ally or Heaven’s feathered army, would be searching with utmost urgency for the Milton daughter.
The reasoning was instantly clear to her when she arrived at the condemned apartment complex where she was being held.
“Shit. Hellhounds.” Four of the creatures prowled through the area, more effective than any small army of demons for keeping most intruders at bay. They circled the empty lots surrounding the building in a well-coordinated cycle. She had nothing, not even a few ingredients for a spell or a pouch of goofer dust, to draw them away, and by the time she would have been able to collect one out of the two, Anna might have been relocated to God knew where.
Maybe if she ducked around and found an opening, some little gap—there had to be an oversight, right?—something of the like at least… she’d be able to sneak in, grab Anna and maybe teleport out to—Screw all of that. It was an impossible situation and no half-assed attempts at last-minute planning, if she were honest to herself, would do anything to rectify that. Sucking in a deep breath, she dashed out from the shadowy niche where she’d hidden, beelining towards the nearest entrance.
The menacing growls of one of the hounds, already alerted to her appearance, manifested a bare few metres behind her and drew rapidly closer by the second. Shit, shit, shit—even as her fingers grazed the handle of the door, she felt the frigid breath of Hell-cur brush against her clothing, then an eruption of sudden agony in her leg as teeth clamped down into her flesh. Ruby hissed in pain, shuddering as she tried to dislodge the vermin from where it had embedded itself in her skin and muscle while yanking at the smooth, worn iron of the shaft. A furious prayer was answered in the form of an unlocked entrance, and she heaved herself through, forcibly tearing her limb away from between cruel jaws. Slamming the heavy barrier shut, she bolted the lock in place, then grappled around for some kind of latch, settling on a reasonably sturdy, dust-coated steel bar that lay on the ground nearby. With a vigilant glance behind her at the shaking door, and a grimace at the ear-splitting sounds produced by hellhound-against-metal, she lurched up the stairs.
It took two hours’ worth of darting unsteadily up and back down flights of stairs and calling Anna’s name to find her, during which she wondered every few seconds why the hounds had yet to break through and tear her to shreds. The flimsy obstruction she’d left in their way should only have lasted a couple of minutes, and that would have been if she were incredibly lucky. The anxious concern lurked at the forefront of her mind, even as she hacked apart the links and chains that bound a barely-conscious Anna in place.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. We just need to get out of here and that’ll be the end of it—Get it together, get up, now. We need to go.” With a rushed approximation of gentleness, Ruby lifted the young woman’s physique into a shaky standing position, keeping an arm out to support her as she turned towards the route to the exit.
Footsteps at her rear warned Ruby of the presence of somebody else even before she spoke. “Ruby? Is that really you.”
At the words of the unexpected newcomer, she tensed, warily scanning her surroundings for a clear escape. “Meg.” That did explain the lack of mongrels yapping at her heels; the other had always been partial to bending the beasts to her will, and the one who’d slashed open her leg had no doubt been one of the many she commanded. “Still hanging around, kissing Alastair’s ass?”
“That’s cute, coming from the traitor. But for your information, old white-eyes is out right now. You’re welcome to leave him a message; I’ll give it to him over your dead body.”
“Get out of my way and go screw yourself, bitch.”
“It’s really not so fun alone, you know. You should come, join us—like old times, just us girls fighting for our Father. Dump her and come back to us.”
“Not gonna happen.” Sweeping up Anna’s form in a fireman’s carry, she made a sprint for the window, to clearly expressed dismay from Meg.
“That’s too bad.” A shrill whistle. “C’mon, boys, feeding time.”
“So— fuck it. We all go to Hell eventually.” The outburst gave the impression of being a random expression of her desperation, but a brief glimpse down the exterior of the building contributed a last necessary morsel of information to consolidate her plan. Wresting the window open with a hand, Ruby fumbled with the weight in her hands—then forced Anna’s body through the gap. The hard thud that sounded a moment later drew a cringe from her along with fervent hoping that the fall hadn’t broken any bones (just one storey, after all), before she redirected her attentions to her much more immediate problem.
“Shit—this is just… peachy,” she hissed under her breath, finding herself staring down the muzzles of three out of the four hellhounds. Charging them would be completely suicidal, but leaping away outside would draw them over to the currently helpless Anna. Now would have been an exemplary moment for when and where to smoke away from your impending doom if it weren’t for the wards that suppressed her abilities, confining her to her unfavourably corporeal meatsuit.
With a last reassurance that Anna was alright (stumbling to her feet and peering around her in absolute confusion, but besides all that alive), she slammed her one portal to possible safety shut and braced herself to fight.
Martyrdom wasn’t in her nature; she would, despite the odds, triumph. And if that was a blatant lie, even to her own mind, she wouldn’t admit it.
“Bring it on.”
