See the Light

’You really stalked me here?’

He hadn’t, not then and not now, but Cory heard the question snap through his ears in that weird moment between being back in his room and out here. Maybe watching for someone for hours would count as stalking them, but he wasn’t doing it maliciously, he was trying to help and that had been the part of this that Ruby hadn’t seemed to get at the station, or when he tried to talk to her the last time. It was always what did he want, like you couldn’t do something altruistic. Anticipating the rogue reapers laughter, Cory twitched like Augustus’ cackle had rolled through in the wake of those remembered words.

Hands held up like he was the one surrendering here, instead of hopefully Ruby, he tried to ward off the question before it came. He could ask her to stay, but it wasn’t gonna make her do it unless she wanted to. Scared as she’d been the last time, she was more likely to run around him like a rabbit escaping the car that was bearing down on it than she was to just stand there and let him say his piece.

The attempt to stop her with his hands hadn’t worked, but his chest did. Cory grunted, rocking back slightly. His long fingers fluttered in the air, almost reaching for Ruby, but he didn’t. They hovered there in the air, far enough away from her, hopefully, that she didn’t feel like he was crowding her. ”S-sorry. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have … come, not that way.” In lieu of asking if she was alright – a question that probably would’ve been tossed back in his face with that same cutting edge to her words – he looked her over. It’d just been a little bump, but Ruby already seemed to be bracing herself for something that wasn’t gonna come. Jesus.

Cory licked his lips, trying to push the nerves away. Her eyes were glowing blue, shrinking down to electric slits that left his mouth dry. He’d been in Mystic Falls long enough to see eyes like that before and Augustus had been quick enough to tell him exactly what it meant too. Yellow for the innocent ones, blue for when they took a life, if they were red then you crapped your pants and got yourself out of there – if you were him. Anyone with a bigger pair could stand their ground, especially since all it took was a touch to get yourself out of trouble.

His brows drew together, his arms sagging so his hands dropped back to his side sides. ”I’m not cornering you. See, you can walk like you did before.” Cory sighed, his frown deepening. ”I’m asking, please.” You didn’t always get what you wanted when you asked, not when you were the sort of pushover people would just cackle about while they steamrollered right over you, but he wasn’t the sort to push.

Hands slipping into his pockets to keep them from rising again, Cory hunched his shoulders. He got it because he was a nice guy, a nice guy that the world had chewed up and spat out more times than anyone had the right to be. ”What happened in the car scared me, if it was scaring you then fine, it was just me. That was a shitty situation though.” One that she probably would even deny had happened in a few months. They’d both been there in that car though, he’d felt Ruby cling to him, had seen the fear turn her eyes into those black holes that had drawn in every bit of hope he’d been able to offer up.

Now they were shiny, like pebbles, just as hard as them too. Fixed up at him, glaring in a way that might’ve had him scuttling away when he had been just a kid, too naïve to realise that he could stand his ground. ”Like I said, somewhere that’s not yours. They think it is though, because you had that life here before.” He drew in a deep breath, let it out like it would start all of this over. ”When I was twenty-two I was in a car wreck. A drunk driver hit my car. He was killed at the wheel and I went into the river, but I didn’t get pulled out until it was too late. That’s not pity, that’s understanding. That’s me knowing about your situation, part of it at least.” The other part was far weirder than I died and somehow I’m standing right back here and I can teleport us around whenever I want because now I’ve got a reaper blipping in and out of me whenever he feels like it.

Tagged: RUBY HERRERA * Word Count: 793

He was a horrible fucking liar. After all his time around Brooke and Leah he should’ve been better at bluffing but he always felt the words sticking in his throat. It should’ve been easy to put his hand on his chest and promise that this was it – and mean it too. Cory sank his teeth into the tip of his tongue at her accusation though, resisting the urge reach up and rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. He didn’t want to keep scaring her – Ruby could say he hadn’t, but her eyes had flashed in warning – he didn’t want to leave her alone with all of this though, not when he could help.

Cory pressed his lips together, trying to find the reassuring words to push past them. ”I was just trying to check that you were alright…” he said weakly. Somehow doing that without talking to her felt worse, like he was the stalker she’d accused him of being. Maybe foolishly, he’d thought that eventually Ruby would get used to him, settling like a frightened dog, allowing him to reach out to her without her snarling.

She could’ve been immune to his please, but instead of bolting she said right there, some of the tension seeming to go out of her as he balls his hands up in his pockets. It wasn’t like he could make himself much smaller without looking ridiculous and drawing more attention to the two of them. Ruby’s eyes were dark again, fixed on him in a way that should’ve had him squirming. He wasn’t scared though, just concerned enough that he couldn’t shrug it all off just because Ruby wanted him gone.

Heavy brows drew together, his lips pursing tighter for a moment as Ruby grumbled at him, acting like none of what had happened had got to her. Like Brooke would’ve done, both of them pushing away any sign that they were soft beneath that porcupine like shell. He heard Leah in the accusation she’d tossed at him. ”I’m not that bad,” he grumbled back, puffing out a breath of disbelief. ”Bullshit. None of that was easy. You were… It was bad enough that I got pulled there …” Biting back the ‘you were dying’ almost choked him. It was too soon for those words to hit without feeling like he’d sucker punched a woman who was obviously still struggling with it. Without him Ruby would have died.

Getting her out of the car had allowed her to rewrite that narrative in her head, to puff up her chest and act like none of what had happened then mattered. How could you just let it go that way?

He went to pull his hands from his pockets again, but he forced himself to stay there, hunched over to reduce the threat of his size. Cory puffed out another breath, tilting his head like he’d argue Ruby’s point. ”Crashes are common, maybe, but how many do you hear about ending up in water? How many people do you know drowned in them?” The point was blunted as much as he was capable of, trying to drive it home gently maybe wouldn’t work thanks to it. Being in Ruby’s car had been like being back there, his own fear starting to claw at his throat once the water reached his waist. He could’ve winked out of there at any time, saved himself. It would’ve meant leaving her though, and that hadn’t been an option in the end.

Tremors had run through them both then – he wasn’t like most of the other reapers, he was him, not some shell of who he’d been, caught up in an afterlife that kept them here, working to scoop up the souls of those following them into death. Cory saw Ruby twitch with it now, and kicked himself that he hadn’t shut his mouth before he had them both there, neck deep in the memory of dark, freezing cold water. Cory touched his tongue to his upper lip for just a moment before he forced himself back there, to the point where his body’s urge to breath had finally lost out to the water. ”I’m here now,” he corrected her. She was moving away. Fuck.

Pulling his hands out of his pockets, Cory almost lifted them between them, but it felt like it’d just be a red rag to a bull that would bite. He stood there, his breathing just on the wrong side of heavy. ”No! I’m not a ghost, I couldn’t have touched you to get you out of there if I was.” All he would’ve been able to do was sit there, tortured by it, as Ruby drowned. ”I’m trying to tell you I drowned, Ruby. I died in my car, because I didn’t have someone there to pull me out the way I did you. By the time the paramedics fished me out, my heart had stopped and I’d … I’d gone with someone like I am now up to …” He glanced up, jerking his thumb towards the sky. ”I was in Heaven. After a while someone made a deal to get me out. They felt bad for their part in putting me there. It didn’t … it didn’t go the way they wanted to though.” His face screwed up faintly as he tried to move through boggy waters. ”I know you know some things, cause you’re a … do you know about reapers?” There was no guarantee that being a shifter of some sort meant she knew about the million other variations in the supernatural world, but how else was he gonna explain that he’d been there in her car because he’d been about to scoop up her soul and take her off … somewhere?

Tagged: RUBY HERRERA * Word Count: 963

Going to die. Cory’s lips parted, sadness flooding his pale eyes, like he was going to speak the truth aloud. He couldn’t sucker punch her like that though. It was one thing to delude yourself about a situation, it was another to wrap those little white lies that everything had been alright around yourself like a security blanket just to have it torn away by a truth you didn’t want to hear. Surely Ruby had known had close she was to dying that day when she’d gripped onto him and begged, but now those lies were wrapped tight and it felt like she’d tear through him just to be able to keep deluding herself about the whole thing.

Cory swallowed hard, shaking the question off with a wave of his hand in the air. He hadn’t come out here to antagonise her, although his mere presence – probably a vicious reminder of what she didn’t want to look back at – seemed to do that all on its own. Protection. He was doing it to protect her, to save her from whatever it was that had driven her into the river in the first place. It felt like it was lurking out there, a dark cloud on the horizon that the rain hadn’t been driven out of yet, ready to swallow her whole and maybe this time his hand wouldn’t be there in the dark and the cold to pull her out.

”What?” Cory muttered, staring at her mouth as she slipped into Spanish again. He’d been decent enough at it at school, but then other things had rushed in to disturb his life – and afterlife – and it had pretty much all fled except for dónde está el baño. He didn’t’ need the bathroom, he needed her to listen and understand, and stop fighting him every time he tried to reach out to her. Puffing out a breath, he continued to frown at her.

Seemingly, like him, Ruby’s introduction to the supernatural world hadn’t been all encompassing. It was a tiny mouthful, just enough to satisfy you, maybe, until you tried to look at it closer and then it was like you were in the middle of a forest so thick you could only get a good look at the trees that were right there in front of you. Everything else was thick and dark, and alright maybe he was the only one who found it that way, scary. From the second he’d popped into the car he’d been trying to mitigate it, but Cory wasn’t sure he was managing it. Just pulling his hands out of his pockets felt like an instigating move. Ruby didn’t move though, just continued frowning at him as he babbled out an explanation.

This was the truly scary bit. Everybody talked about Heaven like it was just some sort of paradise. You died, you went there, if you were lucky, you got to spend an eternity with the people you’d loved and lost. Nobody spoke about getting grabbed back out of Heaven, or the things that were powerful enough to do that. She was quiet, too quiet. ”It’s scary, I-I know. When I found out about it all I thought m-maybe after all that time up there I was losing my mind, you know? Like I was desperate to get back here and check on my sister, so I s-started to make things up.” The babbling spilled out, like he needed to fill the silence that he could feel building in his stomach like a balloon.

It cut off at Ruby's question, his voice sticking in his throat like a fish bone that he couldn't swallow away. Cory tried, his Adam's apple bobbing multiple times before he managed to shake his head. He'd asked the same thing as a kid - why had God let their dad die? They hadn't been a religious family, not the way that Theo and Freyja's were. No church on Sunday mornings or anything, but it felt like he'd been let down by some higher power when a good, hardworking man had been killed that way. Cory felt the sick ache in his chest again, the burn in his sinuses that said tears could be on the way. "I don't know," he said hoarsely. "I don't think it works that way, like it doesn't save you from all the horrific stuff out there, it ... it just gives you somewhere to be at peace after it." And that was the worst bit, everybody else was left here to suffer through the loss, to carry on living with that hole torn right through them.

He wanted to reach up and rub his hands over his face like it would wipe away the nerves, but moving was still dangerous. Wild animals didn’t like sudden moves and despite moments of civility and calm, that was very much what Ruby was. Before he could swing one way or another on the idea she had a knife slithering out of her sleeve and raised it so that he could feel it needle sharp against the vulnerable underside of his jaw. Cory squeaked, straightening up like he could move out of range of it. ”A shifter … your eyes … I s-saw your eyes. There’s nothing wrong with it. P-people aren’t what they are, if you get what I mean. You c-could be a shifter or a witch or a v-vampire … it doesn’t matter to me.” He rose another half inch, starting to go up on tiptoes, although that made him teeter enough to yelp, like it was gonna mean she ended up cutting his throat – by accident, maybe, hopefully not.

Swallowing hard, he tried to steady himself again. Cory looked down at her, his eyes wide like a panicking horse’s. His hands hovered at his sides, fingers shaking but not making a move for her. ”I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t know what that means,” he panted. Oh, but he got ‘stop beating ‘round the bush’. That was one of their mom’s favourites when she was so deep in the bottle that numb started to shift towards angry. Just get it out. ”Reapers take souls. When you die – if you’re not like we are – a reaper comes to take you to Heaven or to Hell. There’s … there’s something else for supernaturals …” And one of the hellhounds would’ve come for her if the water had risen high enough in the car to drown her. Luckily for Ruby, for him, because another death that he’d failed to prevent would’ve crushed him, he’d been the one to realise what had happened instead. ”I saw you about to die the same way I did and I couldn’t just let it happen. We can travel, like we do when we take someone, I used that ability to get you out of there. It’s nothing to be afraid of, I swear.” He doubted his word counted for much though, Ruby was scared and her way of dealing with it was to scare what was confronting her even more. She wasn’t failing at doing it this time either.

Tagged: RUBY HERRERA * Word Count: 1006
Translation: Where is the bathroom?