Five hours in her office, hardly moving from her chair, left Grace ready to go for a walk instead of just grabbing more water. So she made a loop of the bunker, coming to a dead stop when she heard a voice she didn't recognize. "You can't risk all of this for one life. That's not just dumb. That's Winchester dumb."
"Hey!"
"Oh, sorry, my dear. Not you, boy, her." Grace stepped into the room to find the boys, Jack, and an older woman who she didn't recognize, all of them looking at her. "Marrying in doesn't count. It should, though. You knew what you were getting yourself into."
"Uh, who are you?"
"Gracie, this is Merle. She's a reaper, and supposedly she's been keeping an eye on Jack," Dean explained. "She's going to help us." Only here, only in the bunker, would something like a reaper showing up be anything close to normal. Thankfully it didn't happen every day, but it was no longer out of the realm of possibility.
"I'll open the rift to the Bad Place, and you can run and tell Billie, but if you're supposed to be keeping an eye on me… she wouldn't need you around if you can't do your job," Jack told the reaper, everyone's focus shifting back to the two of them. "Or you can help us, and Billie will never need to know."
Merle frowned, but ultimately gave in. "You're going to need to get the cosmic warding back up. The Darkness destroyed it. Not just the monster stuff you boys painted, but the real warding, the kind that keeps Heaven and Hell out of here. The warding the Men of Letters had in here before you boys messed it all up."
"How do we do it?" Grace asked.
"I'm going to need a hand from your angel," Merle told them. "And your help too. Yeah, I know what you are. I'm going to need all the magical help I can get, and maybe we can patch enough together to hold Billie off for a while."
As the rest of them finished the spell in the war room, Grace took the stairs down to the basement. Merle and Cas would be working their part of the spell from the middle of the bunker. Sam stood at the top of the stairs, near the door, to work from there. And Grace went down to the basement to ward the ground floor. Hopefully they would be able to get their magic to overlap enough to fill in any gaps in the original warding the Men of Letters had left behind.
Grace sat on the ground in the dungeon, as close to the lowest point of the bunker as she could get. She opened a dusty book, reading the spell under her breath. Merle and Cas would be doing the real spell work in the war room above her. She and Sam just needed to extend the spell, a lot less complicated of a process than actually capturing Nephilim grace to recharge the warding.
As she finished the last line, silver symbols began to glow on the walls and the ceiling around her. She set the book aside, standing up to check the panic room. Sure enough, the same symbols glowed there too, pure power flowing around the bunker as the old warding was brought back to life.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Grace found the others getting their things together to go through the rift. Wasting no time, Jack had already torn a rift in reality to the Bad Place. The boys had their weapons drawn, Alternate Kaia already stepping through into the Bad Place. "Good luck," Grace offered, setting her book on the nearest table before giving Dean a hug. "Be careful."
"I always am," he smiled. "I love you."
"I love you too." She watched as they stepped though, the entire group focusing on the rift for a few minutes before realizing that there was no point in just standing around and staring at it.
"A house full of teenagers is just as crazy as everyone says it is," Jody smiled, taking a sip of her coffee. She and Grace had settled in near the rift, catching up as they took turns glancing at the glowing tear in the fabric of space and time. "But I love them. I wouldn't trade those girls for anything. I know we all came together in strange circumstances, but we need each other."
Grace was silent, staring into the rift. "Jody, can I tell you something? You can't tell Dean or, well, anyone. Not yet."
"Something wrong?"
"Dean and I have been talking about… when all of this is over, if it ends with us all still alive, he wants to have a normal life. We both do." She refused to meet her friend's eye, Jody putting together where she was going. "Having the house, real jobs, maybe having another child. Not to replace Samantha and Robbie. We could never do that. But to have someone… someone to take care of and love and… have someone who doesn't see the world as an evil place. I haven't told him yet, but we can't." Jody was quiet, letting Grace talk. "It was something with Michael, when he transported us back. Cas says he had to disassemble all of us and rebuild us from scratch in the bunker. Or that's what he thinks. Cas figured it out a while ago, but I don't know when or how I'm going to tell Dean that… even if we somehow survive this, there's no way we can have more kids. He wants a normal life so badly. I don't know how I'm going to tell him."
"That boy loves you more than he loves himself," Jody told her matter-of-factly. "Tell him when this is all over. There's no need to worry about it before then. You've got time. You can tell him down the road. He's not going to be mad or disappointed or anything. He'll understand. Like I said, he loves you more than anything, and there's no way he can blame you."
The rift gleamed, Dean suddenly tumbling through as if Grace had summoned him. He was followed by Kaia - the real Kaia - and Sam. Jack stood from his spot at the table, closing the rift as soon as Dean nodded to him. Grace jumped into action, hugging them all hello. She met Jody's eye as she hugged Dean, Jody giving her a half smile as she reached out for Kaia.
Grace found Kaia some clothes while the girl went to shower, Jody insisting on taking her back to Sioux Falls with her. It was the safest place for her to be, at least for now. And she would have people who felt like family.
"Hey, did the warding hold, or do we need to juice it up again?" Grace asked, coming back into the war room to find the others. She stopped in the doorway, staring at Billie and the pile of ash that sat at her feet.
Billie glanced at her, but quickly turned her attention back to the boys. "I can see the bigger picture. The girl you saved from the dying world, she's not the only one. They're all dying - all the worlds and everyone in them. Each and every world but this one."
"It's Chuck's doing," Cas confirmed. "It has to be."
"When I was a Reaper, I believed in the rules," Billie began, "but when I became Death, I inherited his library. Everyone has a book in Death's library. You humans, the angels, the Nephilim, whatever you are," she told Grace. "Even God. He has a book too, and that book will have an end."
"Why would he write his own death?" Cas asked, frowning.
"He didn't," Billie explained. "The books write themselves. He had no choice but to build himself into the framework. Either that or he wouldn't be able to write the way he wanted to write. He wrote himself in, which means his story must end too. He also doesn't know exactly how it ends. No one knows how their stories end unless I let them read their books. And I don't let anyone read their books. A normal human would panic, but Chuck… Chuck would continuously try to write around it, stretch the story out forever. He's already been trying, but he hasn't gotten it right yet. You two will be the messengers of his destruction."
Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Wait, what is that supposed to mean?"
Billie had already vanished.
