Gwen POV

Dean looked up when he heard the screendoor and Gen stepping out, freshly showered and feeling much more relaxed. Hard to believe not even an hour before she'd been taking out ghouls left and right. They had counted the bodies before they left the building and set it on fire to dispose of the corpses. The world had 19 less ghouls in it now. "Hey."

"Hey yourself. Hey Sam."

"Hey Gwen. Rough night."

"I've seen worse. So have you. Thanks for staying behind with them, figuring out everything on the computer."

"Not a problem. Thankfully Lily stayed asleep for the whole thing. I'm glad you got there before anything happened to Alicia. She's a good kid."

"Yeah. A good kid who should have known better. If Cass hadn't been here, we might not have made it in time." Dean said, his fingers drumming on the side of the coffee mug in his hands. It was obvious he was bothered by what a close call it had been. "She was lucky."

Gwen couldn't argue with that very basic truth that came with both the supernatural and with hunting. "Dean's right. More than that, am I the only one concerned about ghouls using the internet to get themselves dinner? Or that that many ghouls were hanging out in one place? Nevermind them being that close to the Rez."

The brothers shared a look. "We were thinking the same thing." Sam said. "Normally ghouls are solitary. I mean, one of the few times we've seen them working together was that sibling pair we ran into a few years ago that I told you about. The only reason they were even together was for revenge. What would this many ghouls be teamed up for?"

"Nothing good." Dean said, taking a sip of his coffee. "We're going to have to hit the internet, everything. We've been slacking and something is going on that we weren't paying attention to."

Gwen sighed. Of course Dean would take this personally. She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, gently scratching his scalp with her nails. "Not tonight. We can start in the morning. We need rest and then we can figure out what to do next with clear heads."

Sam nodded in approval, smiling at how easily his brother had given in, his head resting against Gwen's hip as she continued the scalp massage. It was a far cry from the same man who'd barely been able to hug her back when she hugged him for the first time back in Arizona. "Sounds good to me. Where's Cass?"

"He's with Alicia and her family. I think he was concerned about Alicia having bad dreams about what could have happened and any lingering effects the drugs they gave her had. He'll probably just watch TV in their living room while they sleep. His grace will be enough to help them rest easy."

Sam POV

Sam woke up and made his way to the room that was in the process of becoming a bedroom for Lily to find that the toddler had actually not woken him up for once and had let him sleep. Running his hand through his hair, he made his way downstairs to find her plopped down on the floor with coloring books while a brightly colored cartoon he didn't recognize played on the TV.

"Hey Lily flower." He greeted the child, squatting down to kiss the top of her head. "Did you have breakfast?"

"Uh huh." She replied, her eyes locked on the screen. "'ean gimme pancakes!"

He looked up to where he could see his brother hunched down behind his laptop at the kitchen table, dressed in the same clothes he'd changed into after the ghoul fight the night before. It was obvious he hadn't slept. He stood back up and walked over to where Dean had a legal pad covered in notes. A quick read showed that Dean was documenting cases or potential cases from the last few weeks.

"Dean? What is all this?"

He looked up from the screen, his eyes very tired but very serious. "This is what we should have been doing instead of being on vacation here." He clicked to a different tab, the online article title "3 Teens Found Dead, Cannibal Suspected". "Right there. A rugaru in St. Louis. The first girl died three weeks ago. If we had been paying attention, maybe the other kids would be alive right now."

Sam sat down at the table, concerned. Was Dean actually regretting coming to Three Meadows? He couldn't remember the last time his brother was this close to happy nevermind being completely sober this long. "Dean, you aren't seriously thinking we were wrong to come here."

Dean sat back, running both hands over his face before picking up his coffee mug to find it empty. "I dunno Sammy. All I know is that I can't remember going this long without a case and we haven't really been keeping our eyes open for any potentials, now have we? Maybe if we'd been paying attention instead of playing house, those ghoul dicks would have never gathered like they did last night."

Sam flinched, wondering how much of that was a reference to the way Lily had attached herself to him and how much was Dean's own growing attachment to Gwen. "Dude, there's no way we can blame ourselves for something like that. We aren't the only hunters out there. We don't have to take personal responsibility for everything that goes bump in the night."

"We haven't been taking any responsibility, Sam. That's my point!"

"So your time here has just been a big distracting waste, then?"

Dean closed his eyes and winced and Sam felt his heart break at the look on Gwen's face as she stood in the doorway with Cass standing behind her. "That's not what I'm saying Gwen."

"Then spell it out for me Dean." Gwen's arms crossed over her chest. "Sam's right, you two aren't the only hunters out there. Why can't you take time to actually have something good and comfortable and let the others take up the fight once in a while?"

"Because most of them don't know what their doing!" Dean growled, standing up and throwing his hands in the air. "How many hunters have you met that would recognize the difference between a wendigo and a rugaru? How many do you think even know there's a threat to angels out there or that there are even fucking angels to begin with?" He paced a little. "We've been sitting here having our good and comfortable and people are dying because of it."

The room took a heavy silence with the exception of the sounds of the music from Lily's cartoon. Sam closed his eyes and turned his head to look at the little girl still in her "jamas" as she called them. He knew what his brother was going to say next and he wished he could say his brother wasn't right. But he was.

"We have to go. It's what we do, what we haven't been doing." Dean paused and took a step toward Gwen. "I'm sorry."

She looked up at him, the hurt plainly visible in her eyes. "No, I don't think you are." And with that, she brushed by them and went upstairs.

Cass sighed. "I don't understand why after all these years you still don't believe you deserve to be happy, Dean. Perhaps I never will." The angel looked disappointed and instead of going upstairs after Gwen, went to the living room to sit with Lily who simply handed him a crayon to color with. The angel seemed to know that the woman needed space right then.

"When do we have to go?" Sam asked, already dreading the trip out of the Rez. Watching Lily and Cass sitting together, he dreaded even more how the little girl would handle their leaving.

"Tomorrow morning. There's a case in Spokane." Dean said gruffly, sitting down at the kitchen table again. "I can do it alone, if you want to stay. You know, for Lily."

Sam was surprised but then again, not surprised. Dean knew from experience as well as he did about how much it hurt to have a parent who constantly left to hunt, not that either one of them were a parent to Lily No Clouds. But he supposed that it was a bit obvious that as much as the little girl had latched onto him, he'd actually enjoyed taking care of her and being the person she turned to for comfort.

But they'd tried the whole hunting alone or hunting separate thing before and it hadn't ended well. As much as he liked being at Three Meadows and having something close to a real life here, he wouldn't be able to think about anything else other than his brother was out there without anyone to have his back.

"No, I have your back. It's not like we can't come back between cases and stuff."

"Yeah. Sure."

Sam sat there for a few more moments before he got up and joined Cass and Lily, getting his own green crayon from the toddler who had thought nothing of moving to sit in his lap before continuing to color. He wondered how much Dean was arguing with his own desire to stay on the Rez. Sam knew his brother and part of this was him pulling away from Gwen before she could get hurt from being associated with them. He just knew it. Maybe Cass was right, Dean didn't think he deserved to be happy.

Gwen POV

Gwen tossed off the covers and turned on her bedside lamp, unable to sleep. It had been weeks since the Winchesters had left Three Meadows to resume hunting. It'd been a mess, Lily crying and screaming for Sam and the taller hunter's heart almost visibly breaking as he gave the child one last kiss to her forehead before forcing himself to get into the Impala with his brother.

The boys were constantly working though Sam tried to make as much time as he could to keep her updated and Lily enjoyed being able to see and talk to him via Skype. Dean had been distant at first but soon was texting her himself or calling instead of Sam to update her on how the case went or what they had learned. She'd almost felt like Bobby, giving her insight and helping with research as well as a few times pretending to be their FBI supervisor, a fictitious woman who answered that specific phone with the words Supervisory Special Agent Gwen Smith. A bit of an upgrade for the FBI agent she had only had to pretend to be a few times over the years. Monster activity had been high but they couldn't seem to connect it to the potential Annihilist threat though all four of them were convinced it had to mean something.

But tonight felt different. She hadn't heard from the boys in a few days, any of them. She couldn't explain it but she had a very bad feeling something had gone wrong or something was wrong. She'd sent more than one message and had even prayed to Castiel but for the first time since they'd been reunited, the angel didn't appear.

She tried to reassure herself as she made her way downstairs for some tea that she was blowing things out of proportion. Maybe the boys were doing a case where there was little to no cell coverage. They'd told her of a few cases like that, including one roughly a year earlier involving werewolves. There was a chance that Castiel couldn't just pop away because he was actively helping them. There was no reason to think the worst.

But she just couldn't help herself.

She made the tea with practiced hands, knowing there was a chance she'd be watching the sun come up instead of getting any rest. Lily was spending the night at the home of one of her little friends and Gwen was thankful, the child showing promise in terms of picking up on how others felt and potentially seeing auras. At least that's what Gwen assumed the color bands the child drew around her rudimentary stick figures meant.

The tea was half gone when there was the sudden sound of a car horn breaking the near silence of the night, making Gwen drop her tea, the mug shattering on the ground. Instead of a short burst, the horn just kept going.

Her stomach dropped as she knew that meant that there had potentially been a car accident in the Rez. But part of her knew that it wasn't just any normal car accident.

She was running down the street toward the sound before the door to the house even slammed shut behind her.

Gwen raced as fast as she could, the air cold and biting against her uncovered skin, stinging her eyes. All she could focus on was the sound of the car horn, that unending blatting sound. She turned the corner and saw exactly what she didn't want to see. What she knew deep down she was going to see but wouldn't allow herself to believe.

The Impala, hood crumpled against the tree in front of the laundry.

She pushed herself to run faster knowing that for the car to end up hitting a tree or incurring any kind of damage meant that whoever was behind the wheel, Dean or Sam, couldn't help it. Couldn't stop it.

She skidded to a stop by the driver's side door, her heart in her throat to see both Winchesters very bloody and it was far from anything caused by the accident. The car hadn't been moving fast enough to do any major damage. Sam looked unconscious in the passenger seat, his head to the side, a split lip visible. Dean was lucky he hadn't been driving any faster because he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt. Otherwise he would have ended up through the windshield instead of with what was probably going to be a nasty knock to the head from hitting the steering wheel when he hit the tree. He was slumped against the steering wheel.

She yanked the door open, trying to keep herself calm as she could. Please be alive. Please. "Dean? Sammy? Come on boys, speak to me." She put her fingers to Dean's neck, panicking for a second until she felt a pulse against her fingertips already slick with Dean's blood. "Dean, sweetheart, come on. It's Gwen, please?"

She took a breath and concentrated, trying to go into Protector mode. She had to try and stay calm and focused if she wanted to help them at all. She closed her eyes and reopened them, using her Sight to see exactly what was wrong with the two hunters. She gasped at the colors, confused at just what had happened to them. It'd be easier to figure out what hadn't.

"Gwen! Gwen! Let me help. Can you tell if he has a neck injury? Can we move him?"

She turned and saw Donna Red Tree who was a nurse at the clinic, a coat over her robe, a medic kit in hand. "His neck is fine. It's everything else." She choked as she carefully moved the older Winchester to sit back against the seat before reaching over him to turn off the car and silencing the horn by some miracle. "Dean? Dean, wake up."

The man groaned and both women gasped, not expecting it. "Sammy, we...we made it. Sammy, get...Gwen..help."

"Shh, I'm here. I'm here." She tried to sooth the man who looked like he could barely stay conscious. He'd fought to get them back to the Rez, back to her before he gave in to the pain and crashed. "Stay with me Dean, okay? You're at Three Meadows. You made it home honey. We're going to take care of Sam. What happened?"

"Ann...lists. Fuck...spell, dunno. Had to..." He grimaced, trying to sit up himself only to be restrained by the two women, Donna's husband opening the passenger side door to help Sam. "Sam?"

"We got him Dean, it's okay. The Annihilists did this?" Her mind raced. If the boys had been attacked or had attacked Annihilists, that could mean that the group had followed them in their desperate attempt to get back to the Rez. "Fuck." She turned and saw some of the Rez' night security coming to investigate the disturbance. She cleared her throat and addressed the small group waiting for instruction. "Get everyone up. Everyone. We might be under attack if they were followed. Get the kids and the elders to the bunkers. Not a fucking drill guys, MOVE."

"Got it!" Johnny Many Leaves said with a nod, a rifle already in his hands. He was quick to pull his walkie talkie out and started delegating work, just like they'd practiced.

"Gwen, I need you over here." Nick, Donna's husband called out. "Where's that angel of yours, your friend needs help."

"I don't know." She had noticed that the boys were alone in the car. Why hadn't he zapped them to safety? Where the hell was Castiel? She concentrated, calling for the angel but like the last couple days, hadn't gotten a response. "Dean, honey, where is Castiel?"

"Sigil." The man managed, coughing and wincing, blood splattering his lips. Internal injuries but how bad? How far had they had to drive in this condition? "They...they blasted him away. I don't...I don't know where. He...can't...tried praying."

"Shit. Okay. Okay." She cursed, trying to think of what to do. "Donna's right here, I gotta check on Sammy. We're gonna figure this out Dean okay?"

She did a TJ Hooker over the bent hood of the Impala rather than take the time to go around and moved around the door to see how Sam was. Her stomach turned at his aura. He'd been beaten severely and looked like he'd been stabbed, slashed, burned and possibly shot. But not with normal knives or bullets. There was dark magic behind these wounds. "Oh Sammy, honey what the hell happened?" She touched the hunter's face, feeling like she did with his brother for a pulse and letting out small sigh of relief when she felt one.

"Gwen, he's really bad off. We gotta get them out of here and to the clinic. I don't even know if we can handle this and we can handle a lot. Can you try some of your angel mojo to stabilize him?"

"I can try." She took a breath and concentrated, reaching deep down within herself for Bria's grace and touched her fingertips to Sam's forehead.

What she didn't expect was to feel like she was physically shoved away, hard enough that she stumbled and fell on her ass on the cold ground.

"What the fuck was that?" She stumbled to get up, almost crawling back to the car and really looked at Sam and his aura. What she saw was something Castiel had taught her in case they went up against anyone who was warded against angels. "Oh no. No no no. They did something where he's blocked from angel grace. Shit!"

"He needs angel magic Gwen. Magic period." Nick emphasized as he waved over some of the clinic workers who'd brought two of the Rez ambulances and were bringing over gurneys. "We can try our best but I think he's going to need more than what we can do. What else is there?"

She looked to Donna who had been giving instructions to the workers on her side about what to do for Dean. "If I can't get help from upstairs, we'll try downstairs."

"Crowley?" Donna asked, having been there to help the demon through his human blood detox. "Would he help?"

"He has to." Gwen got up and rifled through Sam's pockets, relieved when she felt his phone and found it undamaged. "He has to."