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The last time she’d abandoned Heaven, the term “fall” had seemed apt.
This time, it was more like being shoved off a cliff.
She lands in a gray wasteland, a forest with no wind, full of wildlife wihout prey.
She thinks of her brothers - of what they were trying to do, what they tried to stop her from doing, of the fact that she's dead.
Not quite dead enough to let an abomination bum-rush her without losing a head, but still.
“Scared angel,” an amused voice says behind her. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
She turns around to a presence, not entirely unfamliar. She'd never given thought to what monsters look like after they were destroyed.
“My brother owes you a fruit basket.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one?” Ruby looks hopeful, still, even locked down in the holding cell of the Lord.
“Right now, just Lucifer.”
“He’s won?”
“He’s risen.”
Ruby arches an eyebrow. “You look awfully….ragged yet sentient.”
“I’m not with Lucifer.”
“But Michael couldn’t keep you out of here.”
“Michael sent me here.”
“So there’s less paradise and more brotherly love lost. I'm not cryin’ over that one.”
Ruby scoffs, at the deaths of Anna's brothers. A year, a lifetime, an eon ago, she would have smitten to dust any demon at all, and taken her vindictive time with one who dishonored Michael and sold herself to Lucifer.
But Anna's fairly certain Michael dishonored Michael, so that's all over.
Maybe it's her grace suggishly adjusting to a new dimension; maybe it's just pique. But Anna smiles where she should murder, and falls into step next to Ruby.
"So what are you in for?"
Ruby rolls her eyes. Anna waits to hear which one of her brothers destroyed this particularly snide abomination. "Winchesters. I gave it up after we freed Lucifer, and Dean killed me."
Anna nods. Michael, then. Or, good as. "And you didn't...perish?"
"Looks that way. Purgatory catches all kinds of monsters."
It does. Anna folds her wings tight against herself, and if one of them happens to stick out a little to shield Ruby from the leviathan, then Ruby's none the wiser.
She runs the numbers. "One versus purgatory, two versus purgatory..."
Ruby shrugs. “Works for me.”
This place despises Anna, it pricks and scratches at her grace and her skin. Purgatory is made to hold leviathan, but it repels angels. (Once she would have reveled in her Father's universe as the humans do their great ancient structures and walls. Now she just wonders who wanted so badly to keep them all apart.)
Still, it has night and day; like the Earth, Purgatory's darkness shares with its light. It should be as irrelevant to them as the leviathan, but the ashen remains of Anna's grace and Ruby's soul spark a little more brightly in the dusty evening lull. They find a spot along the river and drop their feet in. Ruby leans back on her elbows. Anna keeps watch on her environment and her companion.
"Is it what you expected?"
Ruby isn't nearly as surprised as Anna expected she'd be at such intimate questions. She just shrugs. “Better than Hell.”
“It’s all that different?”
“Well, constant peril, human monstrosity, cosmic perversion. But it keeps me off the rack. Here, you're good, or you're gone.”
Ruby’d been too good at staying off the rack even in Hell, Anna guesses. It’s what had made her so dangerous to humans. Demons don’t usually excel in going half measures.
Then again, neither do angels.
"Bet it's pretty different for you, though."
"Hadn't thought about it." Ruby scoffs, but lets the moment slip.
It's the truth, though. Anna hasn't considered Heaven since she'd arrived, her brothers' betrayals still charring her mouth.
Her brothers had sneered at the leviathan, at their collective mindlessness and their foolishness in taking data for wisdom. She abhors them less now, as a threat to her very existence, than they had just before she fell, when she might as well have been one of them.
"It's pretty different, I guess."
"Gonna tell me about your glory days of smiting us?"
"No." She won't apologize, and neither will Ruby. "Out here, we're free."
Ruby smiles. "Got a plan to make the most of it?"
Anna leans back too, propped up on one elbow. "I've got a few ideas."