Chapter 25

Dean

I don't know how long it had been since I left Grace sleeping in our bed with my wedding ring on the counter. I only knew that my moments of lucid behavior were getting fewer and farther between. This morning, I had woken up completely nude, laying face down on a sleazy hotel bed with empty bottles of beer and whiskey scattered around me. Staring at the wall across the room, I hoped that I was alone, because honestly, I couldn't remember.

Straining, I could hear water running, but that could be from the room next door. Slowly, I picked my head up and turned to the other side of the bed, fearing the worst. Sighing, I let my head fall back to the pillow, seeing that the other side of the mattress was empty. I sat up, slowly, wishing that the reason I felt so shitty was because I was hung over, but I knew it was the demon spell. It had allowed me a moment of sanity to see the damage I had done.

Rubbing my face, I tried my best to figure out what day it was. My phone's battery was dead, so that was no use. I glanced at the clock above the TV and shook my head. It couldn't be four in the morning…well, sure it could. At this point, anything was possible.

I heard the squeak of the shower faucet get shut off and my heart leaped to my throat, listening hard. The shower wasn't from the room next door. It was coming from behind me. The bathroom door opened and a tall blonde, wrapped in a towel, walked out, her wet hair dripping behind her. I closed my eyes and tried wishing it all away. This couldn't be happening.

"You're awake," she said, brushing past me as I hurriedly pulled on my jeans.

Simultaneously, I felt like I was going to puke and run. I closed my eyes, shaking my head, and opened my mouth to speak. "Yeah," I said; my voice hoarse. "How long have I been out?"

"I don't know," the woman purred, approaching me and grinning. "You passed out after that last bottle whiskey." She dropped the towel and grinned at me, "Now that you're sober, maybe you wanna finish what you started?"

A glimmer of hope swelled in my chest. "Finish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "We didn't…?"

She tilted her head and walked closer to me, forcing me to take a step back so that she couldn't press her bare body against mine. "Not last night," she whispered. "You were too wasted to get it up." She tossed her wet hair to the other side of her shoulder, leaning towards me once more. "But considering the week we've had, I'm willing to forgive you."

I swallowed hard and closed my eyes, pushing her away from me as gently as I could. "Look," I gasped, backing away again. "It's been great, I'm sure, but you've gotta get the fuck out of here."

"Dean," she exclaimed, immediately angering. "What the fuck?"

"I've got a wife," I said, grabbing my shirt off the floor and tugging it on over my head. "And three kids. This is a shit storm to end all shit storms. Whatever I've done with you? It's nothing." I faded away, trying to get myself to take a deeper breath. "It's not real."

The young, blonde woman strode over to where I stood with her hands on her bare hips. "Bullshit, it's not real. We fucked over and over again this past week. You can't tell me that it didn't happen." She had a smug look flash across her face. "You want me more than you want your wife, and you know it."

Without realizing that I was even doing it, I backhanded the poor girl, hard enough to knock her down. The real part of my brain was begging me to stop; to get a handle on what I was doing, regardless of the mistakes I had made, but the part of my brain that was comfortable with being a demon smiled broadly. "I'll admit, you're a good fuck, but you're no Grace," I heard myself say.

She cowered in front of me, trying unsuccessfully to move out of my path. "Dean, stop. I'm, I'm sorry, baby! I didn't mean it. You can use me any way you want," she gasped, searching for any solution. I could feel her eyes on me, watching me thread the suppressor onto the barrel of my forty-five. "Please, Dean, I'm begging you."

"Yeah, well," I sighed, lowering my gun towards her head. "Like I said. I've got a fucking wife and kids." I pulled the trigger without much thought, the sane part of my brain screaming for solace. Bending at the waist, I picked up my flannel, jacket, and wallet from the table across the room. Glancing around the room, I looked for my boots and smiled to myself when I saw them at the foot of the bed, near Tracy or Teresa or whatever the fuck her name was. I didn't even get any blood on them.

…

Grace

Gasping for air, I sat up in bed, listening hard. I couldn't figure out if what I just saw was a nightmare or reality. Now that Castiel was an active part of my brain, as he had been for the last three weeks, I was tuned in to every one of my family members, no matter how far away they were. Dean had been harder to track; he was jumpy and moved around often, knowing that it would probably be pretty easy for me to tap into his brain. I took a couple of deep breaths and shook my head, knowing that what I had seen was most likely something that had really happened. Dean had just made his first kill under the demon spell.

I was losing him.

I paced around the room, replaying what I had seen in my head. It was a pretty woman, younger than me, blonde. Tall. I swallowed, hard, trying to suppress my gag reflex as I observed her with my mind's eye. Dean definitely had a type. I shook my head and wiped the tear that streamed down my face, disgusted with the entire situation. I knew it wasn't Dean making the decisions…it was the darkest part of him that strangled his free will. The demon spell had him and wasn't letting him go without a fight.

"Look for landmarks as he travels," I heard Cas say in my mind. "Maybe we can track his movements and eventually just bring him home by force."

"He doesn't want to be found, Cas," I answered silently. "He thinks he's protecting us by staying away because his movements and moods are so unpredictable, but he's just falling deeper into it…he had his way with her…and then he killed her."

Cas agreed with my assessment silently. I took a deep breath and put my hair up into a ponytail. I could feel the stirrings of morning sickness, but it didn't seem like it would be too bad this time. "It's not him," I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else. "He's fighting it any way he can."

"That might be," Cas answered, "but he's doing those things anyway. It doesn't seem like something a female human would be able to do…forgive him for…what you saw."

"It's a good thing I'm not completely human, then," I said, trying my hardest not to throw up for the fourteenth day in a row. "How much longer do we have to wait before we can put her soul back?" I held my hand to my belly, thinking of the fetus I carried and how desperately I wanted something to go my way for a change. "How much longer until we go get Faith?"

"Not long," Cas' voice echoed in my brain. "We'll need Serra, mainly because we need the muscle, and I only trust Lucia with the other children while we're gone."

"Why not bring Sam?"

"We brought him back from Heaven once," Cas thought wryly. "I'd prefer not having to make a case for him again."

When I had decided that I wouldn't be throwing up this morning, I stared into the mirror and shook my head. "It's no wonder he was banging that other girl," I sighed, tilting my head. "Look at me. I'm exhausted, pregnant…again, pale, and washed out…" I looked away from my reflection. "I always wondered if the demon half of someone was just an exquisite truth-teller."

Cas considered my thoughts momentarily and then argued, "No, even being under the demon spell, Dean wants you more than any other woman. I believe that's the reason the coherent side of his brain was able to gain consciousness, if only for a minute or two. He is still bound to you."

"Bound," I repeated, shaking my head and wiping my face with a washcloth. "Sounds more like a prison sentence than a marriage."

"You misunderstand my usage of the word," Cas explained. "You are tied together in a cosmic sense. Even in the darkest timeline I showed you, a couple of years ago, when he was a full-fledged demon, Dean was still bound completely to you. He still loved you. He just had no control over what he did about it."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," I said quietly.

There was a knock on my bedroom door and Emery opened it slowly. "Gracie? Are you okay?"

Nodding, I set the washcloth down and turned towards her. "Yeah, Em, sorry. I was talking to Cas." I walked to the bed I was supposed to be sharing with my husband and sat down. "I miss him."

Emery sat down next to me and held my hand. "I know, child," she said quietly. "He's keeping his distance to protect you and the babies. We'll figure out how to get him back."

"Every time I tap into his brain, he's farther away," I answered, shaking my head. "Even if we do get a hold of him, we can't bring him down by force. He'll kill someone." I paused and tilted my head in thought, pursing my lips. "Or one of us will kill him."

"What did you see?" Emery asked, knowing suddenly that I was no longer speaking in the hypothetical sense.

"He just killed some poor girl," I answered without hesitating. I leaned my head on Emery's shoulder and sighed. "She looked like me."

"That don't mean nothing," Em whispered. "What did she do?"

"What, to deserve getting shot by a demon?"

Shrugging, Emery pulled away to stare into my eyes, looking for the truth. "Grace," she repeated. "Why'd Dean kill her?"

"She wasn't me," I answered, unable to come up with anything else.