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"And still nothing!" Meg whoops, arms open as if to receive blessings from the desert sky. It rewards her with nothing but heat and the sparsest of noonday breezes, but it's enough. She has what she wants. She's been hunting for weeks, and she has won. "Even after all that, you're not budging an inch. I'm impressed, gotta say. A little irritated, I'll give you that. But there's time to work that out."
They are deep in the heart of the American desert - could be New Mexico, could be Nevada, hey it could be Texas, Meg doesn't much care - as long as they're alone, just the two of them out here where there's nothing for miles around but sage and sand and the silent sky. Out here, no one can hear you scream, except maybe the buzzards, but buzzards are excellent secret-keepers. They swallow the worst secrets right down to the bone.
"I thought you hated the desert," Meg says, wiping the blood on her shirt, though that too is covered in blood. "All that sand up in your business and the scenery not changing for miles. Then again, I thought a lot of things about you that turned out to be untruths."
Meg twirls her knife with flourish, a display for no one, for the sheer pleasure of the smoothness of the action, because at least the feel of a knife is familiar. Ruby, however, is not. Not anymore. Not like this.
Ruby is on her knees, curled in on herself as if offering obeisance to the horizon. She quivers over the dark stains on the ground where her blood has soaked into the sand. Her shirt is torn open at the back, exposing skin that has been carefully and thoroughly flayed raw, and still she won't talk. Not that this surprises Meg. She knows Ruby. Or, she knew Ruby. She just never thought she'd be on the other side of Ruby's silence.
"Then again these days you probably just roll over and do what little Sammy Winchester tells you to, right?" Meg says, and she is grinning, half anger, half the anticipatory satisfaction that comes from rooting for something terrible being true.
Ruby's voice is small, but clear. "No."
There were moments, Meg would admit, when she forgot what the questions were that she was supposed to be asking, so absorbed was she by the work of slicing and cutting and the warmth of Ruby's blood on her hands. If she doesn't have Ruby by her side anymore, then at least she has this blood on her hands. It should be cathartic. As it is, it's just blood.
She squats on her haunches in front of Ruby. "Yes," Meg replies, and then she raises the knife.
+
The shadows stretch across the sand as the sun sinks towards the horizon. They've been at this all day. Day and a half? Doesn't feel that long. Meg is precise in all matters, but when it comes to the art of pain, Alastair has too deeply instilled in her his sense of craftsmanship for her to let things like time interfere with her concentration. Anger sharpens it. Nostalgia inspires it. But time is the thing that slips away until she steps back from the haze of focus to look upon what she hath wrought.
She looks upon Ruby, and saw that it was good.
"Take five," she decides.
Two minutes later, Meg is sitting against a rock, legs stretched out in front of her. Ruby curls up next to her with her head in Meg's lap, like they're sisters. Meg runs her fingers absently through Ruby's hair until the shaking and the sobbing subside to little gasps. It's a grotesque parody of comfort. The tenderness with which she touches Ruby is weaponized, design to conquer.
"Do you think he'll come for you?" Meg muses. "He's so busy trying to kill Lilith these days, with a certain someone's help. Do you think, if Sam finds your body in the middle of the desert, he'll avenge your death?"
Ruby says nothing, and Meg tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
"I would have," Meg shrugs. "Not anymore. But I would've, once upon a time."
"I don't need to be avenged."
It's a sentiment so typical of Ruby, no matter whose side she's on, that Meg laughs. There is nothing funny about this. She laughs, because there's not much else she can do.
"Tell me," Meg says, subtly pressing her nails into Ruby's scalp. "Pretend you haven't strayed so far, pretend you're not in bed with the enemy, and tell me something real. Tell me something no one else knows."
A desert breeze blows through, carrying sand that stings Ruby's bare back, untucking the lock of hair from behind her ear. Ruby says, "I'm not the enemy."
"Mmm," Meg says, as if contemplating this. Then she flips Ruby onto her back, muffling her screams as the sand digs into her flayed back. Meg takes out her knife, tightens her grip around Ruby's neck, and says, "Hold still."
+
"Do you remember," Meg asks, casually sliding the blade under Ruby's fingernail, "summer of '69? Hard to forget, really. I mean, at least to me. You seem to be forgetting a lot of things recently. Golden Gate Park, that guy who tripped balls. Remember? And I mean big fat heavy scrotums, that guy. He was out of his mind." She cants her head thoughtfully, tightening her grip on Ruby's arm so she can't pull away. "Why were we doing that one, Rubes? Was it boredom?" Meg yanks out Ruby's fingernail, inspects it, and tosses it aside. "Anyway."
"Please," Ruby sobs.
Meg gently touches Ruby's cheek and lifts her chin to look into Ruby's black eyes, flickering between brown and demon black as the pain short-circuits her ability to possess. "Guy was too stoned to feel the pain at first. He was laughing right along with us. Thought it was a grand ol' game, wasn't that weird?" She raises a meaningful eyebrow at Ruby. "He seemed to like you, though. What was it he called you?" When Ruby doesn't answer, Meg starts in on a new fingernail. "Ruby, you remember what he called you?"
"B… Beautiful sunshine…" Ruby manages.
"Beautiful sunshine come down from the sky," Meg sings, an echo of the guy's meandering attempts to serenade Ruby. "What was it? Something something something mine. Eh." She shrugs. "The guy liked me too but you were his favorite. Even as I was cutting into his arm, he was asking you what your favorite flower is."
Meg yanks off the second fingernail. "But oh man, when the drugs wore off. You remember, right, when the drugs wore off? How he screamed?" Meg slides the flat of her blade along Ruby's arm, then turns it with a flick of her wrist and sinks it into flesh.
Ruby screams.
"Yeah," Meg sighs. "Just like that."
+
"It's surprising you have so much blood left," Meg says, "considering how much you're funneling to lil ol' Sammy these days. Boy's gotta grow up big and strong!" She shakes her head. "What did he do to get into your good graces, anyway?"
Ruby says nothing.
"Why so taciturn? Come on. I know your true name and you know mine, after all, and if we know that about each other, why won't you tell me why it is Sam Winchester's so special to you?"
Nothing.
"Why's he so important, Ruby?"
Nothing.
"Why have you chosen him over us?"
Nothing, at all.
+
"Come home."
"No."
+
Demons can heal by themselves but it takes a while, especially after the number Meg's done on Ruby. Meg takes her to a foreclosed house in the nearest town and leaves her in a devil's trap. In two days Ruby should be up and about again. Two days feel like forever.
Mostly Meg doesn't say anything and gives Ruby a wide berth - she's said and done what she wanted to, and she feels rubbed too raw to pursue the subject further - but sometimes Ruby is the one who talks. It's a difficult thing: Meg hates to hear it, but she has missed her voice.
"You've got it all turned around," Ruby says quietly. "I'm not - we're still - We're on the same side."
Meg idly picks at her cuticles with the knife. "You're still delirious from pain, so I forgive you for that gross inaccuracy."
"I haven't betrayed you," Ruby says, pleads, almost sobs. "I can't tell you anything but I'm not the enemy, I swear, I haven't betrayed you."
"You need to look up what that word means."
"Meg, please."
"I'm going out. You be good."
"Meg--"
+
The next time Ruby wakes up, she finds the corner of the devil's trap completely smudged straight through. She steps through it experimentally. Nothing bad happens. She checks around the house, just to make sure, but she is - as always - alone.
I'm free, she thinks in wonderment.
Something inside her aches at the realization.
Part of her wants to stay and wait for Meg. To explain. To be explained to. This is the part of herself that Ruby never listens to anymore. Meg once said that it must be vestigial humanity. Ruby is less sure. She wonders if there's just a little part of herself that hangs on tight right into death and into demonhood, and maybe it was called humanity once, but maybe now she can't call it that anymore.
The other part of Ruby is telling her that she should leave while she still can.
So she goes.
+
Abaddon calls her forward. "What news, sister? Have you found the traitor?"
Meg bows, keeping her face blank. Such blankness looks strange on her. It could mean anything. "No, lord. We haven't seen Ruby in weeks."
Abaddon frowns. Meg maintains neutrality.
"Very well," Abaddon concedes. "Keep searching for her. Keep us posted, sister."
"Yes, lord," Meg says, and steps backwards as she bows, and disappears.