In the Light

Chapter Thirty-Three: Guilt

Ruby looked down at her hands then crossed her arms, digging her arm into her bruised side. "I ran out awhile ago. I decided I'd just go with it. I hoped that I didn't need it anymore. That was naive."

It was just her and Sam. "It wasn't naive. It was hopeful. You should've just told me."

"I just," she sighed. "I don't know. I thought it'd get better or I didn't see the correlation. My brain is just all jumbled." She put her arms behind her head and turned around, looking away from Sam. It hurt her side to lift her arms, but she needed the pain.

"It's okay, Ruby. We can fix this."

She jerked away from his touch, crossed her arms, and faced him. "That's the thing. It's never fixed! It's always there! Not as bad as now, but it's always there. I've been off the meds for too long. It might take months for me to get back to normal. I can't believe I did this." She gave a frustrated groan. She wanted to punch the wall, but she held it in.

"I can't imagine what this is like for you. You should be angry. This sucks and it might take awhile to get better, but it will get better. It might always be there, but we'll do what we can to get you in the best place possible." He looked at her with pain in his eyes. She knew that she had hurt him by not taking care of herself and hiding things from him.

"I'm sorry that what I did hurt you." She still hadn't moved. "I'm sorry that I can't explain myself better." She wanted to believe what he said, but she just couldn't.

"It's okay. You just wanted to be better; you hoped you were better. I don't understand why you do some of the things you do, but it makes sense to you. There's no shame in having to fight everyday. Let's just get some medicine in you."

"Yeah. Um. I don't have a prescription. The mother superior at the convent has it." Ruby started freaking out. "Crap. What do we do?"

"Hey, remember, Cas can transport anywhere. He can just zap himself into a pharmacy and get some."

She exhaled, "Okay."

"I'll go tell Cas." He rubbed the side of her arm as he went inside. She still had her arms crossed. She was still a little angry and crossing her arms made her feel more in control.

Dean came outside then. He was holding something wrapped in a newspaper. "I don't know what to say to you, Ruby. I don't know what to make of this whole situation. I don't blame you for having this mental illness. But I heard Sam asking Cas to get some medicine for you. Why did you stop taking it?"

"I just ran out of it and I thought that I might finally be better, so I just stopped taking it. I'm not going to try to explain why I didn't start taking it sooner or tell any of you what I was doing." She shrugged her shoulders, not knowing what else to say.

"What about why you won't let Cas heal you or why you took the pain meds?" Dean put the newspaper wrapped object down on the table and crossed his arms to match her.

"It makes me sound bad. I don't know if you'll still respect me if I tell you. It's something that you can't understand completely unless you've experienced it."

"I'm not saying I have, or have ever had, a mental illness, but I did have some pretty bad times." He paused and looked down. "The worst was when Sammy left." Ruby felt guilty then because she and Sam had pushed each other into bad situations. She dug her arm into her side again to stop the thoughts.

Dean must have seen the movement. "That's why. It helps you, doesn't it? How? I want to try to understand, Ruby."

"I don't know how, it just does. Cuts usually only help temporarily, but this is better. Whenever I start having bad thoughts, I just..." Even those few sentences were more than she wanted to say.

"What do you mean by bad thoughts?" He wasn't mad and he wasn't trying to get her to let Cas heal her. He truly just wanted to understand.

"One of you doesn't like me, I'm a bad hunter, all the bad things that could happen to us at any given moment, things from the past that still scare me or make me feel guilty. And that's just off the top of my head." Her tone got lighter. "I must like you a lot. I've only told a handful of people about that. I told my mom, sister, a psychiatrist, and two therapists."

Dean was still serious. "Is it like that all the time for you?" Now he seemed more concerned.

"Basically. I can't be having a normal day and then wam! Sam hates me or remember that time in high school I said something stupid to that girl? Yeah, she probably still remembers that. But that's just the anxiety. It's easy to describe that."

"Depression is when you seem tired. You sleep more and your voice is lower and slower. Mania is when you do the reckless stuff that scares the crap out of us." Dean was putting the pieces together.

"Yeah." Ruby felt like she should apologize again, but she also felt that those things were out of her control. "I just need to ride out this roller coaster of crap for a month or three until these meds start working."

"At least you've got us." Dean leaned over and picked up the thing in newspaper that Ruby guessed was a present. "I was pretty mad at you last night, so I went for a drive and I found this in one of the stores. I didn't know if I'd want to give it to you, but I do now."

"Is this a pity gift?"

"Not at all. It's a 'thanks for sharing' one."

She sighed and took the gift from him. It was a Led Zeppelin tee shirt. She'd never seen one like it before. It was very feminine. It was more narrow at the waist and it was basically held together by strips of fabric in the back. It had the cover of Physical Graffiti on it, but it was recolored to black so it blended in to the color of the shirt. It was amazing.

"Wow. This is actually amazing. Thanks, Dean" She hugged him and laughed, a little more happy and a little more free.