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The knife pierced her body, and he felt it-he felt every tear of flesh and every drop of blood being pulled away. The light flashed from inside her, growing brighter than it should, brighter than anything should, until it burned his corneas into a charred mess. He felt a vague sensation of falling. He fell further than he knew he should, further than the distance to the ground should have been, as the air surrounding him suddenly boiled. Her body crumpled beneath his. At first she softened his fall, but then it grew painful, agonizingly painful, as she shattered into tiny knives of glass under him, ripped his skin even more, blood pouring from the wounds like rivers-hell collecting the spoils-
Sam woke panting, sweat making his hair heavy and gluing it to his hot forehead. “Ruby,” her name escaped his lips before he could think to say it, barely audible and fading into the almost-dark that blanketed the motel room. The clock on the nightstand read 3:43 as he swung his quivering legs over the side of the bed, hissing at the obnoxious creak of the mattress springs. By the amber light of the street lamp glaring outside, he could perceive Dean sprawled across the other bed, fast asleep. His brother would be oblivious to Sam sneaking out for a quick walk.
He laced up his shoes and cautiously opened the door, hand resting lightly on the gun he had tucked into his pocket. With Lucifer freed and hunting Sammy, going out alone at night seemed like a terrible idea, but he had to get out of that room and see something other than Ruby’s face branded into the darkness and the backs of his eyelids. Every moment he was alone in the motel, he could almost hear a knock at the door, an echo from the very recent past.
His fingers brushed against the flask he still carried on him-force of habit, despite no longer having any desire to drink demon blood. His own blood heated up at the very thought of what she had had him do, all for her own evil goals.
But I did it willingly, he thought. I knew it was wrong. She didn’t make the decision for me. The excuses rattled in his brain. Having sympathy for someone so twisted went completely against everything he had previously thought he stood for. Their love was the very definition of the “If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right” cliche. And he had never seen any problems with it.
When the light exploded from inside her borrowed body, knife quivering, its blade lodged deep in her stomach, it hadn't seemed real. His body had been in fight-or-flight mode, and he'd chosen fight and from there his mind shut down. Plunging the demon-killing knife into Ruby had been an automatic response. It was for the best.
He tried to tell himself it was for the best, but something deep inside him didn't buy it.
Sam's mouth tingled at the sudden memory of her blood, bright red rivers being sucked between his aching teeth and down his desperate throat. His arms twitched momentarily, recalling the feeling of her next to him on a cheap motel bed, underneath him on that chair the first time, falling from his grasp with a knife driven to the hilt inside her fragile body...
He took a deep breath of the cool night air, allowing it to flood his airways. Sam anchored himself on the feeling of it washing through his lungs, then pulsating back out of him. It was the tide of the ocean of a person that was Sam Winchester: rising and falling, changing, swelling up to be more vast and powerful each passing moment, only to break once more against an inevitable shore.
But such is the life of a hunter, Sam thought. The tide will always come in.
Once he finally returned to the motel room, Sam found his brother still asleep. His own eyelids felt like lead, but even as he settled back under the blankets, Sam couldn't help but find the dimly lit room too bright. Turning over uncomfortably, he found himself thinking that it couldn't possibly be dark enough unless the shadows matched the hue of Ruby's black demon eyes. And of course, he was not allowed to get those back.