Vaguely, was the mental response. Sam didn't dare interrupt Ruby right now. She was a mess and she had a lot that she wanted to get out. Sam wasn't going to deprive her of that when it was obvious that she needed it. He let her speak, listening to every word that came out of her mouth attentively, those vague memories of the sex addicted former demon bouncing around in his head as he tried to place a face with the name. It wasn't too hard to do when Sam remembered how often he'd spent face palming over her loud declarations on the boards ; to her credit, Anya had made sure that she was one of those people that were generally hard to forget.
Anya had done all right, from what Sam could remember. She was a little out there as far as her personality went, but that was to have been expected from someone who didn't understand humans. Ruby had the potential to do a little better. She had him. She had a family here. People she could count on and talk to when the world got too confusing. Sam would teach her how to fight, he would prove to her that being human wasn't just about being a sack of meat and bones and overwhelming emotion, and Ruby would start over. It wouldn't be easy. They'd have to work hard at it and Ruby would probably get tired of it more than once, because being a demon was probably like being on a different planet. But for as long as Ruby was like this, Sam would stick with her. She was a human, but she was still his wife. He still loved her.
“You're not used to it,” Sam tried, watching warily as Ruby hiked up the bottle of whiskey Sam had brought home. The cap flew off and she was already chugging the bottle down without a second thought. Well, no. There was a bit of a second thought as Ruby winced lightly at the harsh burn that hit her on drinking from the bottle. She seriously hadn't felt that before...? “And I know it's not the same, having powers and being all...demon-y, but you'll get through this. You don't need super strength and healing powers to survive. Everyone here – all the people who got screwed into the apocalypse and all those regular, unextraordinary people out there who have never look a real monster in the face their entire lives – they get by just fine. You will too.” Sam combed a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Look...I can't imagine waking up one day and suddenly being something else. I mean, honestly? You're in deep. Way deep. But I know you. I know that you're made of the good stuff -” Sam pushed his free hand forward and poked Ruby gently above her heart. “- and I know you'll get through this. You're not weak. You just feel weak, because you haven't felt what you're capable of yet. Just think about everyone out there. How many people have fought in this war? How many of them are normal people who haven't got a single power to their name? You can do this, Ruby, and I'm gonna help you every step of the way.”
It was all he could do. Support her. Try and make everything out to be better than it was. Sam wasn't an archangel. He couldn't snap his fingers and turn her back. They had to make the best of this situation, even if that meant prepping Ruby to be a human for the rest of her life.
“And for the record? All that stuff you're feeling now? It's only gonna make you better in the long run.” Fucked up to say, but it was true. “You can hate yourself for it. You can go back and do all that crap again. You can hide in some dark corner for the rest of your life and drown yourself in cheap booze in hopes that you won't ever have to deal with the crap that's going through your head. Or you can do what I do. Get up every day, promise that you're gonna do better, and try. I know I haven't killed near as many as people as you have and I doubt I know anything about the kind of guilt you're dealing with now, but I did kill someone before. In cold blood, remember? Every day I tell myself I'm gonna do some good out there so that another girl won't wind up the way she did. It's not much. It doesn't change anything. But it's better and that's...it's something, isn't it?”