Who? Dean and Ruby What? Confrontation. Where? A rarely-used hallway. When? After this note exchange. Rating? Moderate/high: attempted murrrrder! Status: Complete
One thing left to do.
It’s probably one of many things he should do, and it’s definitely not the top of his list as far as things he wants to do, because the top three things on that list are things like driving around in his car, music blaring and the windows down with nowhere to be, Sam in the passenger seat like always. Things like spending hours with Jo somewhere they won’t be interrupted, somewhere they don’t have to rush and worry.
Things like eating a decent burger, eating some damn pie that doesn’t taste like crap, getting really drunk, sprawling on a dirty motel bed and falling asleep knowing he’s safe, knowing when he closes his eyes he won’t see nightmares or memories or angels in his head who can’t keep their mouths shut long enough to let him rest.
But none of those things are things he can do, and this is, and it’s more important than those things, because it doesn’t matter what he wants if he does this and the demon is still around to hurt Sam and possibly hurt Jo, too.
No, he has to take her out.
He wanted to meet her, and Ruby was far from stupid. Dean was out for some kind of elaborate plan to get her away from Sammy. Why didn’t he get it. Why could he not see that she was the only thing that Sam needed in his life. Oh she toned it down for this place when she needed to, went to her Doctor, and of course Dr Chaythe said she was right. Said Sam just needed to see it too. That’s why he’d come to her office sometimes, That’s why they could be together there. Sam knew the truth, Dean and his little blonde idiot pushed him sometimes. Made him believe that Ruby was bad for him. It was stupid, it was wrong. Ruby was all he needed and some day he’d know that.
“Dean” she said, rounding a corner, having followed the man for a little while. Just long enough. Oh she was good at making those Winchester Boy’s twitchy. Azazel hadn’t picked her for nothing. She met his gaze as she stepped around him and leaned casually against a wall in a lesser used part of the hospital, a ladies toilets nearby.
“So tell me, what is this. Why the sudden, unavoidable urge to meet me. I figured after last time that’d be it. Or is this more of the same, more ‘Stay away from my brother’ scribbled in sad yet insistent little notes with lines under them meaning you’re very very serious. Or maybe you’ll actually say it this time. Maybe you mean it oh so much you’ll open your mouth and tell me to go to hell.” Ruby smirked as she watched him, “But I don’t think so. I don’t think you have the balls”
Dean turns, frowning as she came up behind him. He’d planned on getting the drop on her, not the other way around, but he can work with this. He doesn’t need to catch her by surprise - he just needs to catch her, that’s about it.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t bother with notes, just unscrews the cap on the bottle of Holy Water he’d brought with him, shooting a glance up the hall as he does and then stepping in - effectively herding her back towards the door to the restroom, hopefully, because while he could maybe do this in the hall, he’d much rather somewhere slightly less open. This isn’t one of the bathrooms that gets much use, much traffic - and the hall isn’t either, but it’s more likely someone will come down the hall than it is someone will come in the bathroom.
Ruby spotted the holy water as he herded her backward into the bathrooms, if it had been Sam she supposed she’d have been more enthused by the shoving but as it was it was the brother that was trying to kill her. Because that really was what he was trying to do. Frankly it was rude. Also she had no intention of dying at the hands of Dean Winchester. All the same she let him shove her. He’d fling his little bottle of water at her and she’d get the jump on him when he thought she was hurting. Perfect.
“You could have just told me this is what you wanted. I’d have dragged you down here long ago. I have this idea about comparing notes.” she whispered, leaning in to him as he pushed her into the wall and kissing him hard. He’d hate it, and she knew he’d hate it, so she pushed the kiss as far as he’d let her before starting to try and kill her. “You know you’ll never really save him” she said laughing in spite of the danger. “He’ll never really be your brother again. Truth is he’s mine, he’s always been mine. And all you can do is let him go. Just let him go Dean and everything can be good again”
She pressed herself as close as she could against him and smirked. “Tell me big brother. How did you think this was gonna go for us, somewhere like this. What did you think you’d achieve?”
He shoves her away from him - or at least off his face - expression clearly one of distaste, and the part of him that’s not occupied with rage and planning on strangling the life out of this bitch was hoping he’d have the chance to go brush his teeth, scrub away the taste of demon. He didn’t want her to be anything like the last person he kissed, he wanted that to be Jo. And now there was no time - he was pretty sure even if he managed to kill Ruby, he wasn’t going to have a chance to go see Jo before someone found out, before he got locked away. And if he did, she’d probably be too busy being pissed off at him for doing something stupid...
Whatever. She’s clearly trying to distract him - like that would even work, like he even wants her or anything to do with her except her dead at his feet so he doesn’t have to worry about her anymore - and he’s not going to give her that chance to get away. The bottle of water is upended on her, and he tosses the empty bottle aside, reaching out and getting one hand around her throat, the other on her shoulder in an attempt to push her off him and spin them around so she’d be the one against the wall.
The water doesn’t burn. Of course it doesn’t, and Ruby’s eyes narrow at the attack, if this is how he wanted to play it then this is how it would have to go. She had expected that he might one day do this and she was far from stupid. Sam would fall right into her arms if she played this right, all she needed to do was make him believe that all she’d ever done was for him. Just for him. She’d get rid of Dean. Once and for all.
She could have fought back, maybe he was stronger, she didn’t know. But she didn’t need to do anything like that, she let his hands curl around her throat, she even laughed as he spun her into the wall. She leaned back waiting for just the right moment, just when it started to bruise, thats when she’d fight back and that’s when she’d make a run for it, she might even rip her top a little, play the game just right. Oh he’d pay for this. “He’s mine Dean” she said, every word designed to hurt him. That’s what this was about now, after all.
Her laugh, her taunting, only served to make him more angry, more desperate to have her dead. She isn’t going to get the chance to keep Sam in her claws, under her influence. Sam isn’t hers, isn’t ever going to be, he’ll make sure of that. He pressed in tighter, kept her as pinned as he could, waiting for the right moment - the moment the light went out of her eyes, the moment the vessel she was in broke. If he could just do that, even if he could just get her out of this form, he’d buy enough time for Michael to do whatever it was he needed to do (he didn’t know what to expect, hoped and, yeah, okay, almost prayed that whatever happened, Sam would be okay, that Sam wouldn’t get hurt when the archangel tore the devil from his body).
It was getting there, each second passing, the tightening of his hands around her neck, and then finally, when things started going blurry she was ready, she pushed back, hard and fast with more strength than she had any right to have. Her training giving her all she needed to escape him. Azazel hadn’t sent her in to break them apart without making her ready in every way, physically fit, mentally ready to tear a family apart. That’s who she needed to be again.
She let loose with a scream as she ran toward the door, ripping her top as she went, and took off down the corridor. It wouldn’t take the orderlies long to get to her, and it wouldn’t take them long to see what had happened. She bit down hard on her lip, more ‘proof’ of the horrors she’d just ‘saved herself’ from. “I’ve been attacked, please...” she screamed, finally running into the arms of a strong orderly who took one look at her, ripped top, her lip, and of course her bruised neck, and nodded to two others who took off down the corridor after Dean. They’d find him pretty easily.
He wasn’t her problem anymore. She’d won.
Dean had almost forgotten she wasn’t a normal girl. Not exactly - he knew she was a demon the same way he knew Sam was his brother and the sky was blue - but he’d been reassured by the fact that he had her pinned, that he was winning, and he hadn’t thought that maybe she was waiting for him to be confident, to be secure in his victory, to push him back. Catch him off guard... he should have known, he should have expected it...
She took off, screaming for help and he was torn between chasing her down to finish the job, or running away, getting out before they find him, because he hadn’t done enough damage, she wasn’t broken enough for the demon to need to leave, she wasn’t dead. He started after her, then froze as two orderlies came his way, looking pissed off and he balked, panicked as they reached him. Instinct said to be still, freeze, curl in and wait for it to be over, panic quietly and hope it would stop, but they didn’t do anything but start half-dragging him up the hall.
Ruby’s there, standing with another orderly, being ‘consoled’ and no, no this isn’t how it should go. It was his turn to catch someone off guard, lunging out of the grip of the orderlies, towards Ruby.
Oh Dean, Poor Dean. He really was making this all the more easy for her. He lunged toward her and she screamed again, jumping back as far as she could go and crying her little heart out. Performance of her life really, before she fell back into the orderly’s arms sobbing silently as she watched Dean, The orderly disengaged her and aided his friend in getting Dean to the floor and pulling a needle from a pouch, one kept for very specific reasons. The last thing Dean saw before the drugs sent him to sleep was the look on her face out of sight of the orderlies. The smirk, the self assurance, and the one mouthed word. ‘Mine’
It was all hers for the taking now, and Sam would have some time free of Dean, time enough for her to get her boy back. And she would. She knew what she was doing after all.