This was officially the first time that Sam had ever been able to confide in anyone outside of Andrea about Ruby before. Yet even Andrea, hard as she may have tried, couldn’t possibly understand everything. It was something that one had to personally experience in order to fully comprehend; the experience itself was hard for someone on the outside looking in to look at and make an honest opinion of. If any example needed to be seen, Sam could have very well taken his own opinion of what Pike and Faith had been doing before and compared it to how he felt about them now. Before? He would not have hesitated to put a bullet in Faith’s head if he thought for a second that she was going to snap. Whatever progress she would have made would have counted for nothing in his eyes, so long as Sam saw to it that she didn’t harm anyone that he cared for. Things were different now that he saw the situation from a more personal level. He would always be wary of that woman, but at the same time Sam felt like it was actually okay to be rooting for her. If Faith could change, didn’t that mean that there was hope for Ruby to do so as well? Did that mean that this strenuous journey that he had decided to take part in would be worth it after all? Sam had a hard time maintaining faith in a lot of things lately. Especially lately. But the mere idea of Faith getting through her struggles with Pike backing her the entire time spiked a bit of that hope into his chest that Sam had almost forgotten existed in the first place. He couldn’t help but look at the man sitting next to him with a hint of admiration in his eyes. To think that he was able to stick with Faith for this long and that the two of them were actually progressing toward…toward something that wasn’t as bitter and fucked up as wherever it was that they had started brought forth an air of inspiration that Sam had not expected to find sitting at this bar tonight. All it had taken was the simple pass of a bowl of nuts and he had found someone who was willing to exchange thoughts and answers to the questions that he had been juggling through his mind for quite some time now. No, this didn’t make everything better. That was something that only time could do, as Sam very well knew. But it helped. And Sam felt nothing but surprise at that simple realization.
“Not every person out there deserves a second chance,” Sam said, somewhat gruffly as he looked down into his glass, “in fact, part of me still wonders if giving Ruby one was the greatest idea in the world.” Sam twisted the side of his mouth downward, brow furrowing heavily. “But I saw something in her that no one else did. She did evil things. She killed innocent people. As a Hunter?” Sam glanced over at Pike with a shake of his head. “It was my duty to take care of her from the start. The second that she came to me and revealed that she was a demon, I was supposed to drag her ass into the first trap I could get my hands on and send her straight back to Hell where she belonged.” Why he did not at the time, Sam would not say. It was a long story. One that involved him playing the part of a desperate man with a clock over his head and nowhere else to turn. “Then I find out that she’s actually not who she says she is and suddenly it’s all so much worse. But I still couldn’t do it. You wanna know why? Because while she was two parts fucked up and a whole fistful of crazy, she was the first demon I ever saw that was able to love. I’m not talking that fake crap where she could get away with using the ‘l’ word and convince all of the world that she was the most genuine and pure demon to ever walk the earth. No, she definitely isn’t the most genuine creature that I’ve ever…” Sam smiled faintly, eyes falling to his hands as they settled against the edge of the bar in front of himself. “I know that this might sound strange to you, but she’s warm. On the inside, I mean. At first I could feel it…I - it’s hard to explain.”