Hey! WriKai here!
OK, SO, I know I'm going past the usual 20-ish chapters before the end, but I'm honestly having a lot of fun with this one and will probably be extending it out past the norm. Just a heads-up for anyone asking. Thank you all again so much for the continued readership, messages, comments, and overall absolutely awesome levels of support from everyone!
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Getting the grace from Castiel's car wasn't difficult. I hadn't done a half-bad job on those symbols I put around the lockbox, not at all, and was grateful that I still remembered the code to open it. W1TCH3CH. My version of Witch-Bitch.
Easy.
I stood outside the Bunker for a while, though. A long while.
In all honesty, probably longer than I had safely.
But I couldn't help it. I missed the place. I missed the Bunker, I missed the Winchesters, I missed hunting and research and going home to the apartment and…
By God, the apartment. I hadn't been in it since… Well…
Just since.
It was only a two-hour drive away, but I didn't have to drive, did I? I could just appear there, if I wanted to. Appear in the living room if I wanted, look around, see what had happened. Crowley had mentioned that Lucifer had moved research on Amara from the Bunker to there, as well as the rest of my things. If he had, they would be there.
Unless it wasn't, and Lucifer had trashed the place in spite, or perhaps he'd destroyed everything, just to prove a point to Cas.
I thought about it, thought about going to the apartment, but decided against it.
I wasn't that person anymore.
Kylie was dead, after all. I honestly doubted Sam and Dean could recognize me now, much less Cas or even Lucifer. Rowena certainly didn't.
Then again, I'd only met Rowena once, and she'd left me for dead.
I walked in to the Bunker, because I still had the key, after all. I figured that there may be a spell or something in there I could use to help me find the damn angel.
If I was being honest, though, I knew that wasn't the only reason. I missed the place.
I missed the first home I'd had in a while. Where was my home now? That cabin Crowley hid me in?
In all honesty, probably, yeah. That was the only place I kind of had left at this point. I couldn't go back to the apartment. I couldn't stay in the Bunker, if anything I was sneaking in and disappearing again like a miscreant teenager, or a damned thief.
I didn't have any other home, anymore. The house I'd grown up in, no, that didn't exist as my own home anymore. Not even close.
So… Yeah…
The cabin.
The cabin from a demon, who killed my family.
The cabin from a demon that was previously inhabited by said demon and the goddamn sister of friggin God.
That was home, for me, at the moment. Of all places, that was what I had for a home.
I sat down at the B.A.M.T., casting myself out one more time to check on the Winchesters. Still working on that case, but apparently it was somewhere in… Colorado?
That wasn't as far as I thought they were. I needed to move faster.
I booted up my laptop, and got to work. First thing was running my pictures of the Book through Charlie's decoder (she'd emailed it to me before she'd died), something I could have running in the background as I went to the Bunker Book Spreadsheet. Every book in this place was in there, categorized by five maximum search queries. I entered in the words "summoning" and "tracking" to see what books came up. When too many books came up as an answer, I narrowed it down by adding in one more word. "Angel."
That got me a list of twenty-odd books total, a much more manageable list.
I could definitely manage twenty-odd books.
The question was, would I have time to?
I decided to head back to the cabin. I'd have more time, more ingredients, and more security there. I couldn't keep track of where the Winchesters were 24/7, and the longer I stayed in the Bunker the more I risked being seen and discovered.
There were over a million books in this place.
They wouldn't miss a few.
I checked the status on my laptop of how the decoding was going. There was a lot of pages, so it would be slow, however it was already about 12% done. I wouldn't be able to leave until it was done, the magic interfered with it whenever I tried to run background programs, so I was stuck here or with the car until it was done.
I could wait to leave until my computer was done, and take the time to do some research until then.
I wrote down the list of books, as well as where they were all located, before changing my search parameters" "Darkness," "God," and "Creation."
Once I weeded out the fifty different copies of the Bible I knew wouldn't be helpful, I had three more books that looked like they might be helpful. I wrote them down, and thought on one more search.
"God," "Summon," "Christianity," and "Tracking."
I got one book. I double checked the list I already had to see if it was on there anywhere already.
Nope.
I had about thirty books to pore through and research, and about… However much time it took for my laptop to go through the remaining 84% of progress to do it.
So that's what I did. I got the books from their shelves, ducked in to Kevin's old room to grab one of his many spare notebooks and pens (I couldn't bear going in to my own room just yet, but I'd made my peace with Kevin's old space), and dove in to researching.
You know that thing on TV, where a witch or warlock has like, five different books floating around them as they read and research a particular topic of interest?
Yeah, that's a fun thing.
It's an insanely fun thing. And with the different texts side-by-side, I could actually draw good comparisons and notes as I jotted down different ideas for a few possibly tracking and summoning spells of my own.
I wasn't certain how long I'd been at it, only that when my computer dinged that it was done I almost didn't hear it.
When I put the books back down, though, I felt… Different.
I had just absolutely enjoyed research, back in the Bunker, but I'd been making things float and spin and done things like a witch.
I wasn't supposed to enjoy being a witch. This was just a necessity. Just something that I was doing to be useful in the fight.
But… But I'd been enjoying it. I was enjoying the magic and the ease that came with it. I was enjoying the ability to hold a flame in my hand, or levitate five books at once, or disappear and reappear at my own will.
I may not have enjoyed all the methods to learn these skills, but by God I loved using them.
I actually enjoyed being a witch, when for so long… I hadn't. I'd just viewed it as a necessity to help others, and afterwards something to suppress and hide away.
I checked out the translations that my computer had given me. A little odd here and there, like throwing chunks of text through an online translator, but for the most part pretty easy to read and understand.
"Alright. I have options." I said, smiling a little bit.
I had to make a few trips from the Bunker to the cabin, I could only take with me whatever I was touching, but I got it all back with me. I didn't need any ingredients from the Bunker, I had everything I would need already save for Metatron's grace, but I had that now too.
I decided to take some time finishing with the books. If I was going to ask Metatron for help, I wanted to make sure I was set and prepared in case he tried to screw me over like he has consistently with the brothers. Armed and dangerous with knowledge and magic.
Dear God, I was taking a page out of his own book.
"Hell, I think I'm taking pages out of everybody's books at this point." I decided, cracking back open a few books. It was time to get to work.