NIGHT 54: M21-30 HALLWAY

[autophoenix.livejournal.com]

[ from here ]

It took her a moment when she turned down the men's hallway to skim the area with her flashlight. This was the part where she got confused, the muscle memory not really carrying her the whole way. He'd given her directions once, but that felt like a lifetime ago now that she actually needed to put them into practice without Bella attached to her hip. Being alone made it harder, for some reason. She hoped Bella was having more luck than she was at getting to … wherever.

On her left, the single door of the bathroom that she suspected was the same as the women's facilities, and on her right four hallways. Peter's was … she scrutinized. Second in from the door? It sounded about right. If her room was F34 and it was the closest to the door, 24 should be one row further in. So, she hung a right and headed down the hallway.

Her flashlight beam checked the numbers on the doors as she headed down. 30 … 29 … the numbers were counting downwards, which was a good sign that this was the right hallway to get her to M24.

[ bumping into sylar peter ]

Comments

[boyking]

Not a problem. As if Dean was just an obstacle to deal with. Not that Sam was surprised Ruby was looking at it this way; he knew full well what Dean represented to her. But it bothered him that he was starting to do the same thing. He'd never meant for it to get this out of hand. As much as he knew it wasn't spiraling as far out of control as it could've—the shadow spilling the truth, the slip of details here and there—he still felt as if he'd let it fall too far to the wayside. Whatever it was. Was it his relationship with Dean or the fact that he'd never wanted to disappoint his brother when it came to this?

He bit back a sigh. Never mind.

His gaze traveled back to Ruby. He didn't return her smile, but he relaxed slightly. It wasn't that he looked to her for reassurance—the thought of that was...it felt wrong, even to him, even after all this time—but he couldn't deny that it put him at ease, knowing that he at least had her to fall back on. Because while he could handle this alone, he knew, too, that having someone at your back wasn't something to turn down.

Not that Dean wasn't there, as well. He knew his brother would always back him when it came down to it. But it was...different, that was all.

He nodded, pausing for a moment to consider if there was anything else he needed to bring it up. The conversation felt pretty much done—he'd agreed to what she wanted. Beyond that, there wasn't a lot in terms of strategy aside from keep Dean from finding out and God knew he already had that part down.

So what else was there...all that angel crap, maybe? Though he had to admit, he wanted to leave that alone for now. Too frigging complicated and messy. He wasn't sure what to make of it yet, even now, and he'd always preferred to sort a situation out for himself before he brought it up as a topic of conversation. Growing up in a household with Dean and Dad had taught him the importance of figuring out exactly where he stood—or at least where he wanted to stand—before tangling himself in a damn yelling match about it.

Oh, right. She had mentioned running into a creature last night. From the way she termed it, it was apparently an oversized gorilla. Sam had seen oversized cats, but he'd yet to run into any oversized apes. Just imagining it made him feel crazy. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that important, but he wanted to know regardless. He didn't like having blank spots of information when he could fill them in.

"What was that thing you ran into last night, anyway? You said...King Kong?"

He really, really hoped that that was just an analogy.

[thatdemonbitch.livejournal.com]

The ease in his shoulders was enough of a confirmation that her reassurance had done its job. Maybe he wasn't all smiles and sunshine, but hey, beggars couldn't be choosers, and the kid still thought his brother was dead. Nobody'd be smiling after that. So, she'd do the good little lap-demon thing and take what she could get and just move on when he decided it was time.

His mention of King Kong brought back the memories of the night before in the kitchen with Roxas and she nodded, still not regretting her choice of words to vaguely describe it on the bulletin despite the fact that, judging by Sam's curiosity, he probably was taking her pretty literally. Pushing back her brief interest in what the kid was up to tonight, she got to working on explaining herself.

"Not life-sized; I mean, it wasn't exactly stomping New York City into rubble, but pretty damn close. I don't spend a lot of time in African jungles hanging around gorillas, but this one was larger than your average bear and seemed more interested in longpig than bananas." All sarcasm aside, that wasn't really the scariest part. The humor seemed to drop out of her expression and it grew something between grim and exasperated. She didn't like admitting to getting her ass kicked six ways from Sunday by an animal. But, they weren't exactly talking about Bambi here.

"I'm no vet, but I got the thing between the ribs with that knife and it didn't even flinch. It's skin was pretty tough to get through, too." She gave a nod over to where the spare kitchen knife was lying around. Sure, it wasn't made for any real fighting, but given the length alone, she had to have punctured a lung -- if it played by normal rules, that was. But it didn't hesitate in the slightest and just continued to fling her and Roxas around like rag dolls.

There was also the part about Roxas summoning up the weirdest sword she could never imagine, doing shit all with it, and the two of them getting knocked out cold, but it was probably better for her pride that she kept that to herself unless Sam got to prying.

[boyking]

Huh.

Actually, that...description was pretty average for the monsters that infested the institute from what he could tell. That snake, for instance, where a bullet and a knife from Dean had barely slowed it down. Only Gabriel (Sylar, he kept having to correct) had managed to fry it.

After seeing that one room upstairs, during that crazy night with Peter, Sam knew now where they came from, but it was still really weird to think about just because he wasn't used to looking at in terms of something straight out of science fiction. Myth and urban legends, he got. Some psycho piecing together animal experiments just felt a bit out there, as illogical as he knew that was.

He frowned in thought. "And then the night just ended?"

She hadn't said how she'd killed the thing, so that must've been what'd happened. It'd saved his life a couple of times. He still couldn't forget when Dean had nearly slit his throat. God. Yeah, that had been insanely lucky timing. Or, he guessed luck maybe wasn't the right way to put it. The blackouts were far too convenient for it to ever be an accident. What was bizarre was that several of the patients had died—the number had to be around five or six, possibly more now—which could mean only one of two things: either there was a slip up in whatever system was keeping most of them alive, or the institute had some kind of criteria about who got ganked. Given that they had the ability to bring people back, the latter seemed more likely.

Unsettling as hell, though.

/SHORTEST TAG AFTER AN ETERNITY OF WAITING I'M SO SORRY

[thatdemonbitch.livejournal.com]

Man, it really killed her to admit this. Ruby's lips tightened in annoyance and she just begrudgingly shrugged a shoulder like she was stretching her neck out to work away the kinks. Even to Sam, she was having issues, and that was sayin' something, considering he was about as close as people got. Whoa. Weird thought. Regardless, she came around.

"No. And then it flung me across the room like a rag doll and I blacked out. Considering I didn't get torn apart, though, I'm guessin' something like that happened pretty quick." Well, technically, it had taken Roxas it out first. Technically. But as far as she was concerned, he wasn't the critical part to the story and Sam would be better off not hearing about how she was playing babysitter and making friends with Charlie Bucket.

"What about you? Didn't exactly expect a "better than usual" update on check-in. So, you gonna let me in on how you spent your time creepin' around or should I start guessing?"

[freewill]

[From here.]

Seeing how Castiel's first priority had simply been to get away from Gabriel, he hadn't put much thought into where to go next. Part of that was because it was obvious. Having seen Dean and Gabriel already, Sam was the only one left. He realized that it might be fruitless to visit the younger Winchester, and yet he still had hope that he would be able to get through to Sam where he had seemingly failed with Dean.

Perhaps, if Sam wasn't distracted by a girl the way Dean had been--

That, however, did not turn out to be the case. He landed in a room again, removing his hand from Orihara as usual -- and yet the sight he took in with the aid of his flashlight was more or less the last thing that Castiel could have expected.

Ruby, who had gotten Sam addicted to demon blood and led them all to the cataclysmic end point of releasing Lucifer, was standing there and speaking with Sam like she hadn't died nearly a year ago on that fateful night. It was true that Castiel had not been present for her death, but Dean had told him about it later -- about how he'd plunged a demon-killing knife right between her vessel's ribs.

Both of them seemed far too comfortable with the situation, which was hard for Castiel to reconcile as he stood there, Orihara forgotten for at least the moment, and stared the human and demon down. He felt his small amount of Grace repelling against Ruby's presence and his whole body had tensed without him realizing it.

He needed to tell Sam that he was practically lying with the devil by conversing with Ruby, needed to stop her from spinning her webs of lies, needed to somehow prevent this from falling completely out of control again. He could think about why Ruby was alive later.

And so he advanced on her, not certain of what he was going to do and yet propelled by anger. "You."

[propheteer]

As before, with the teleportation came another thought—or memory, or vision. A ring of fire, and a man standing beyond it. Something was wrong with his face.

And there was Castiel's voice again: "You're not taking Sam Winchester. I won't let you."

"Castiel," was the man's reply as he started walking around the fire. "I don't understand why you're fighting me... of a—"

And then it was gone. Izaya forced his focus to their new location, where it seemed Castiel once again had stopped to visit acquaintances. He couldn't help but stare for a moment at the man in the room—a man that he recognized from earlier, but whom he'd never seen in person before now.

If Castiel had come to say hello to him, though, that obviously wasn't on his mind now. He was advancing on the girl instead with an accusatory-sounding "You."

He'd stayed quiet last time as he'd still been reeling, but he had more clarity now than before. Curiosity over the situation prompted him to ask, "Something wrong, Castiel?"

[boyking]

Nothing ever happened inside the rooms. Sam never took something like that for granted—letting yourself be lulled into a sense of false security was the worst thing you could do—but he'd accepted it enough to not be on full red alert when he was sitting inside talking to Ruby.

So he sure as hell hadn't expected the freaking angel to just materialize out of nowhere like some David Copperfield trick, along with some guy who looked more confused than not.

Jesus, what—

He started off the desk, drawing his gun without even thinking. (Threatening angels with bullets, great. This was his life now.) He moved forward to step in front of Ruby, as automatic as it'd been his brother instead. As ambivalent he might've felt towards her sometimes, he'd made his alliances a long time ago. Watching her back had stopped being something he had to think about when it came down to it. If Castiel had just walked up to them like a normal person, it would've been different, but sheer surprise of the situation threw every instinct he had on the defensive.

Besides, judging from Castiel's immediate reaction, the guy didn't look that interested in diplomacy at the moment.

[thatdemonbitch.livejournal.com]

The suddenness of their entrance had Ruby tensing up and automatically at a loss on what to do. It was rare that she wound up on the receiving end of this kind of thing, and suddenly she had an idea of why Sam had acted like it was so goddamn unnerving all the time. At first, she didn't even manage to process who it was, just that they were talking and they were in Sam's room. It was so many levels of bad news --

And then it hit her. The stench of the angel -- Castiel, the guy had called him? -- his Grace was overpowering. Her eyes flashed dark, pupils dilating until they had encapsulated the entirety of her eyes in that inky darkness, reflecting a certain kind of hollow darkness within. Immediately, she raised a hand, waving it back towards Sam and stepping between him and the intruders.

How stupid was she right now? Putting herself between him and an angel. But whatever they were here for, it couldn't possibly be good news and as much as she wanted to hold onto that self preservation, there was something in Sam that was a whole lot more important to be preserved.

"Sam, get back," she barked. A surprising thing happened then, something she hadn't intended. A power thrumming through her veins, concentrating in the hand that was thrown out in Sam's direction. And a force, strong and invisible, moved out from that point as she flung her hand backwards to keep him back, hurling Sam into the wall behind him, above his bed.

Oops.

It was enough to distract her from the angel and the seething rage that was filling her at the sheer sight of him. She looked backwards, a little frantic and discombobulated, worried at the sound of crashing that accompanied his fall.

Immediately she hurled a glare that was meant to distract from her own failure at Castiel and his nameless but equally guilty companion.

"A lot of things are wrong with Castiel. Crashing into rooms unannounced is just the tip of the friggen iceberg." She seethed. It was mostly directed at Castiel, though it was in unsolicited response to his companion's question and generally addressed him.

[freewill]

This was the third time this night that Castiel had flown to someone he'd considered an ally and had been threatened as a result. First had been Dean and his female friend's instinctive reaction, second Gabriel's odd switch in demeanor, and now Sam Winchester was pointing a gun at him.

Even though Castiel was well aware that the bullets could hurt him as much as any human now -- the night he'd tried to make it to the chapel with the Doctor had proved that rather clearly -- he stared at the weapon like it was a toy instead of a killing device. The truth was that Sam was the furthest thing from his mind right now, even if he was the reason that he'd come here in the first place.

No, his gaze quickly returned to Ruby, expecting an explanation. She didn't back down from facing him, even forcing Sam out of the way. And yet the way she did so was completely unnecessary and entirely too predictable for a demon.

That act of violence against someone he'd come to see as a friend (even if that feeling clearly wasn't returned at the moment) was enough to spur him into further action. Castiel lunged forward with two quick steps and seized Ruby by her arm. She could still use telekinesis; that was something he would need to file away and address later.

Instead, he pulled her close, staring her right in her blackened eyes. "How did you get here? What are you doing here?" His tone was stiff and demanding, Orihara's question and Sam's state after he'd hit the wall forgotten for the moment.

[propheteer]

Beyond Castiel having some issue with the woman, Izaya wasn't sure what kind of situation he'd found himself in the middle of. It was rather like being suddenly thrown into the middle of a drama, but without knowing any of its history... Still, that was fine. That kind of thing could be picked up as he went. But it still made him wonder why the tall, familiar-looking man had been so quick to reach for a gun (where had he found a gun, anyway?), and what the woman had done in the past to anger Castiel. Even though Izaya suspected they had come for the tall kid and she had simply been a surprise, Castiel seemed far more concerned with her than with either the man or his gun.

And then the man—Sam, she'd called him? Was it the same Sam that he'd 'heard' mentioned a moment ago?... He'd gone flying away almost like he'd been thrown, and then the woman started throwing accusations about Castiel's character. It was a personal history, then, and one that Izaya would stay out of.

He removed himself from beside Castiel, heading for where Sam had fallen instead—partly to see how he was after that and partly to keep out of the couple's issues in case it put him in the line of fire. Their spat was interesting, but right now the questions of what had happened to Sam? and how had that even happened? were foremost on his mind.