1/2
Brady sighed, “I keep hoping you’ll be bothered by those jibes about Sam controlling you. It would prove you still have some pride.” He put on a concerned expression, the one he used to use on Sam back in the living room of his apartment with Jessica when they’d sat up after she’d gotten too tired to watch one more crappy TV show (or pretended to rather, more likely she’d sensed that Brady wanted to talk to Sam alone. Jessica had always been so sensitive, so attuned to the needs of others and what it would take to make them feel comfortable…or to leave them open to manipulation in this case) and he’d muttered uneasily about the things in himself he feared, the need for drugs, for release. He’d perfected that face and he was proud of it, the earnest crinkle of the brow, the slightly downturned lips, and the little, involuntary-looking crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Sam had always become most vulnerable, most open when he was trying to help someone else, to be empathetic. “It really is worrying that you put so much stock in one relationship. Dr. Phil would have some words, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I know,” he went on, waving a hand to forestall any more lectures or speeches, “Sam opened a door in what remains of your shrunken demonic equivalent of a heart into a place where you could feel the sunshine of love and family and puppies named Schmoopie. I’m sure it’s a lovely place where you feel entirely at home. Maybe, on a good day, you forget for a little while about everything you did. Maybe that even bonds you and Sam together. He was always so afraid of people finding out who he really was, even in college when the things he’d done were only living like what humans would consider a freak and hunting monsters, but he responded to that fear with empathy for anyone else who was afraid. You trained me Ruby, you and Azazel, to recognize human emotions, to use them. Don’t think I don’t see what’s happening here, that it’s all some mystery I sit around puzzling over late at night. I see everything that you see in Sam. I’m just strong enough to recognize it as a weakness.” He leaned forward and, for just a moment, the permanent sneer that was always present, if not on his face than in his tone or his movements, that air of repressed, condescending laughter, was gone. For a moment he simply looked intent, as if he’d just placed the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle and was looking at the whole picture for the first time.
“You can fight your war out with your husband until the very end. I think it’s pathetic, the appeal you find in it, and I’ll go on taunting and tempting, because it’s fun, because I like doing what I’m good at, and because I like the reaction. But, really?” He smiled slowly, languidly. “I’m not particularly worried about you coming back any time soon, because I know it’s going to happen eventually. I mean, really, Ruby, how do you think this is all going to end?” He waved a hand dismissively, again, “I’m not talking about which side wins the war. I think that’s one we have to agree to disagree on until Hell crushes you like a bunch of garden insects. What I’m talking about is how this ends for you.” His index finger leveled at her and then he twisted his palm so that it faced Ruby, fingers curled into a loose fist, ready to be raised to illustrate numbering as he ticked off his points. “You could lose the war and be sent screaming back to Hell where, we all know, nothing will be enough to keep you from turning back to us in the end. You could lose Sam, to Lucifer, to death in battle, to any number of the dangers of war and, let’s admit it, you’ve never been particularly independent. You’ll sell yourself back to this side in some desperate attempt to salvage what you can of him, and you’ll know you’re perverting all that sunshine-and-puppies stuff to do it, and you’ll do it anyway, which really just makes it more fun.” The third finger leveled slowly, giving those first two points time to sink in before he continued.