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"You coming, or what?" Anna slaps the dirt off her hands on the worn denim of her jeans, looking for all the world like a woman gardening in her backyard rather than an angel in human form in a post-apocalypse world.
Ruby can only see about three feet in front of her through the dirty smog infesting the air, but she sets off after the angel who's saved her life.
—
"I've heard of you," Ruby says when they stop for a breather.
"Isn't it nice to be famous." Anna doesn't deign to look at Ruby, but continues picking her at her fingernails with the sharp point of her silver blade.
"You're the one who killed Sam and Dean Winchester."
"I didn't exactly kill them. I killed their parents so the Winchester brothers would never be born." She looks up then, gauging Anna's reaction.
"Same difference," Ruby says around a yawn.
"You can pretend to be bored if you like." Anna shoots her a grin. "I know you're impressed."
"I'd be more impressed if you'd succeeded in stopping the apocalypse."
Anna grunts and goes back to picking her nails.
—
They learn each other slowly.
Ruby sometimes thinks they're more alike than different, but then Anna's wings unfurl with the sound of a hundred birds taking flight, and Ruby's eyes glow black in response. She learns to laugh at the annoyed face Anna makes every time she sees the demon eyes.
She knows, even if Anna will never acknowledge it, that Anna is Ruby turned inside out, just another side of the same creature. "Things like us," she muses aloud, as Anna pretends to be asleep, "we existed before everything. Before language, before morality. There's a sameness to us. Maybe that's why we chose each other. Look how similar our vessels are."
"My vessel is nothing like yours," Anna says sharply, getting to her feet. She doesn't elaborate, and Ruby doesn't push, content to let some things remain mysteries.
But you still saved my life, Ruby thinks to herself, knowing that to say the words out loud would be to invite the angel's wrath. The air fills with the angry sound of Anna's wings, and Ruby smiles, knowing she'll be back.
--
"You're fucking annoying, you know that?" Anna says after the first time Ruby kisses her. She doesn't take her fingers out of Ruby's hair.
"So I've been told." Ruby reels her in for another kiss, smiling against Anna's mouth when she doesn't pull away.
—
"I don't know what I'm doing," Anna says in the dark, the only time she speaks without disdain. "All my life, all these centuries, I had a purpose. And now."
"And now you're fucking a demon?" Ruby supplies, bracing herself for some smiting, but it never comes.
"And you're fucking an angel." Anna sounds almost amused.
"I won't tell if you don't." Ruby rolls over and straddles Anna's body, linking their fingers together, pushing Anna's arms up above her head.
"Whom would I tell?" Anna says, droll. "Or you, for that matter."
"Anyone. Everyone." Ruby kisses down the line of Anna's jaw, opens her mouth against the hollow of Anna's throat.
"No one cares about us." Anna arches her body against Ruby's. It's the only way she'll ever ask for more, ever show how much she wants this twisted, purposeful thing between them.
"And isn't that a good thing," Ruby whispers against the shell of Anna's ear.
Anna doesn't respond in words. It's a good thing they don't need them.
—
“I heard something interesting,” Ruby says. They’re flying, taking in impossible views of the world. Sometimes it comes in handy to have an angel for a girlfriend, even if Anna will probably claw her eyes out for using the word. From above the clouds, it’s as though the apocalypse never happened.
“Do tell.” Anna’s voice drips with disdain as usual, but this time Ruby ignores it.
“I hear there’s a nephilim in town.”
Anna laughs, no humor in the sound. “There aren’t any nephilim.”
“He’s not from this world. Rumor has it he’s from a world where the apocalypse never happened.”
“Is he, now?”
Ruby’s come to know Anna well enough by now that she can sense the angel’s interest. “Mm-hm.” She spreads her arms wide, a bird in Anna’s arms. “Take us higher.”
“Bossy,” Anna says, but complies.“So, another world.”
“Another world. Imagine the possibilities.”
“Indeed.” Anna takes them even higher, wings rustling. The landscape changes beneath them, greens and browns shifting to include blue, a winding river thick with pollution that’s invisible from up high.
-end-