part 1 of 2
Ruby saw it in his face, the moment he turned around and looked at her. Pure, unadulterated trust. She'd seen the moment that had shattered, too, so she knew that it hadn't happened for him yet. He might have been able to fake friendliness in writing in order to get her to come here, where he could kill her, but he'd never be able to fake that look. Somehow, by means completely unknown to her, she'd gotten Sam back from a time when he still trusted her.
Powerful magic, to be able to pull people from different times like that. The Trickster, whoever he was, had sensed it too-- she'd seen what he'd written to Sam about falling out of time. She'd been right that she didn't want to tangle with the witches that had pulled this off, at least not without some seriously powerful back-up. Not without a really solid plan.
The question was, now, whether she wanted to deal with Sam. He trusted her, which meant that at least for now, she would probably be under his protection. That was important; she liked being alive, and there were far too many dangerous types around here for her to feel totally comfortable, even if none of them really knew her. The ones that worried her most were the hunters. She'd tried to get one hunter-type to accept a favor from her, with no success. Buffy, on the other hand, thought she was on Sam's side. If she had Sam to vouch for her, they probably wouldn't be out for her head. They might even defend her, so long as she didn't start dismembering people, which she really didn't have any intention of doing.
The fact was that Ruby had been telling the truth when she'd said that she wasn't like other demons. She certainly wasn't like the simple, brutish ones who just wanted to make people bleed and laugh at them while their insides decorated their surroundings. She'd always been motivated by two very simple desires: survival and power. The two were intertwined, because power had been the thing that kept her alive, kept her from dying in pain and covered in boils, kept her from being killed by rats. Power had made her knife, and given her an edge over the other demons, even though she had started out very low on the food chain. It had gotten her out of hell, finally, and gotten her this particular gig.
And hanging out with the Winchesters had taught her something, even if she'd learned it too late. There was more power in humanity than she'd originally believed, even when she'd been human. She'd thought that she needed to be darker to be stronger. She'd led Sam down that same path, but he hadn't really had his heart in it. Because he had too much heart, which was why she'd underestimated him. There was definitely something that he had that no one else did, and it wasn't cunning or ambition or a survival instinct, because she'd seen him be totally idiotic, and also suicidal. Yet he was the one that had scraped through every situation he'd found himself in. She found herself trying to imagine him facing off with Lucifer, trying to beat him with the same determination he'd brought to trying to beat Lilith... and she found it plausible. Maybe she had been wrong, and it wasn't Lucifer who was the most powerful player on the table, but Lucifer's chosen.