Everyone was in the middle of breakfast when the alarm went off, the boys racing away to change. Grace went to check the war room table, telling them that it was a, "Lamia in Ohio. I just texted you the address. Be careful, boys."

That was how their lives went for a couple of months. The alarm would go off and they would drop everything to hunt down a monster before it hunted down another victim. There would be no big investigation, no fake identities, no trying to cross-reference what they were seeing at crime scenes with the typical traits they'd see in monsters. They would know what it was in minutes. While they were on the road, Grace would pull up her research, calling Sam to tell him how best to take care of whatever problem they were facing. Most of the time they managed to take the monster out before it managed to kill anyone. When they got busy, she would go out on hunts as well, taking off with Jack while the boys were a couple of states away.

When the boys were home, they all would celebrate whatever holiday Mrs. Butters thought they had missed. Their little family went from Christmas one week to Sam's birthday the next to Halloween and New Years. If the alarm went off while the boys were already out, Grace would check the table and call the closest hunter in their network. If it wasn't a long drive, or if there was no one nearby, she would go herself, even if she was bogged down by research, which always made Mrs. Butters frown.

If she wasn't out on a hunt, Grace was busy researching, but she started to take more time out to find out about the old Men of Letters, what they had been before Abaddon destroyed them all. Mrs. Butters was right - most of the Women of Letters had retired after the war. The only one left was an initiate who had been killed by Abaddon. Some of them must still exist somewhere, but it would have been an odd sight for Mrs. Butters to find someone like her in the bunker in 1958. Any of them who had retired after the war would have been nearing a hundred years old. Not that easy to track down.

Grace gradually filled Mrs. Butters in on what had changed in the last 80 years. While the boys were away, she went about her research, often venturing into the library to find Mrs. Butters cleaning as she went to swap out the books she had been working with for another crate. One evening, Grace emerged from her office to find the bunker covered in paper hearts, cupids hung everywhere. "Mrs. Butters, what's this?" she asked, calling out into the library. "It's Valentine's Day already? Didn't we just have the Fourth of July last week?"

"I was just gonna ask about that myself," Dean's voice answered. He stepped out from behind a bookshelf, carrying a file on a werewolf hunt the Men of Letters had gone on in 1948. "It's nowhere close to Valentine's Day, right?"

"Yeah. Hey, Dean, I've been meaning to ask you," she lowered her voice, pulling him back in between the shelves.

"Woah there," he grinned, looking her up and down. "I guess I don't have to ask if you missed me."

"No, I just don't want Sam to hear us. It's none of his business anyway. Dean, can we go hunting? It's been ages."

"Of course. You can come with Sam and I on the next one. All you have to do is ask."

"No, I mean just the two of us. Like we used to. You and Sam, hunting with the two of you - we're family, but it's The Sam and Dean Show, y'know? The brothers, all of that nonsense that Chuck cooked up. It's always been you two. It's always supposed to be you two, with a couple of guest stars here and there. But we used to go hunting together all of the time. We'd go on crazy road trips that our parents all hated, and - do you remember those summers I stayed with Bobby? And that trip we took down to New Orleans? We drove all night and I got back an hour before an important exam, but we still made it. I miss that, Dean. I miss us. Us before all of this apocalypse stuff, before Chuck and Michael and Lucifer and all of that. When our biggest problems were stealing cursed objects from museums and poltergeists that just wouldn't give up."

Without a word, Dean set the file down on the shelf behind him, reaching out for Grace. He held her tightly, the two of them just standing there for a moment. "Where do you want to go?"

"Somewhere that isn't here. I'm tired of sitting in my office and staring at books all day. I'm nowhere close to being done with cataloguing the whole library, but I'm so tired of it."

Dean frowned, sensing that something was wrong, something beyond this. "Gracie, is there something you're not telling me? I mean is there something going on? Do you not trust Mrs. Butters? She's not taking over for you. She couldn't take over for you. She's just letting you do your job and not have to focus on keeping the bunker running."

"She's a sweetheart," Grace spoke into his shoulder. "I just miss when things were... uncomplicated." Her phone began to ring in her pocket, Grace breaking away with an exasperated sigh. No rest for the wicked. "It's Eileen. I should take this. I'll see you in a bit?"

"See you in a bit," Dean nodded.

Grace answered the video call, signing hello as she left the library. Dean took the file he'd been looking at, intent on getting some work done. But as soon as he turned out of the shelves, Mrs. Butters stood before him. "You know, I could always tell when something was bothering my boys. I can hear it in her voice. You need to take her out somewhere. When is the last time you two went on a real date?"

"A real date? Uh…"

Mrs. Butters crossed her arms, simply telling him that, "I learned a lot watching the Men of Letters live their lives. Most of those men never married. Those who did were lucky if their wives stayed around, since they were so rarely home. Grace - she's a good one. She understands this life, which is a lot more than most of the Men of Letters ever could have found. You need to make sure you don't lose her. Take her on a real date. Your work will still be here when you get back. It is Valentine's Day, after all."


"Where are we going?" Grace asked, Dean refusing to tell her.

"It's a bit of a drive," was all he would say, even when she asked again an hour in. And two hours. By the third hour of their road trip, Grace was getting restless. Dean refused to tell her what they were after either, leaving her to wonder what they could be hunting down. As he pulled off the highway in Lawrence, he told her to close her eyes. Grace obeyed, waiting until she felt the car stop. "Okay, we're here."

The diner had been repainted several times, and the windows replaced after a particularly bad tornado in 2011, but it looked pretty much the same. They had parked here dozens of times before, after long days at school, after hunts, on their way home from driving around in the middle of nowhere. "Dean, you didn't -"

"C'mon. You said you missed the old us. Let's go see if our old booth is still here."

They sat and talked for hours, the waitress kindly indulging them and listening to their "we used to go on dates here all the time" stories. There was nothing to hunt in Lawrence, but as the diner closed, they grabbed a couple of cups of coffee to go and Dean drove past their old houses. New families lived there now, their yards littered with toys. Someone had built a treehouse in the backyard of the old Winchester house, the roof just barely visible from the road.

Dean took a dirt road leading away from the highway, following the familiar curve of the treeline until they were parked at the same spot they always used to park in late at night, down near the river's edge. The two of them sat on the hood of the Impala, staring up at the sky. "To tell you the truth, I missed this too," Dean smiled as he put an arm around her.

"Mhm." It was nice not having to think about Chuck, or Jack, or Amara, or the looming battle that they were all constantly worried about. But something nagged at the back of her mind, something she'd been worrying about on her own for a while now. She'd told Jody, of course. And Eileen. They'd both been a great help. She knew that if they didn't make it out of this, it wouldn't be worth burdening him with it anyway. But it was Dean, the same Dean who always tried to make her feel better, tried to understand, even when he couldn't. She didn't want to blame him, since it really wasn't his fault. But she knew he'd blame himself for not being able to control Michael, even though he was a literal archangel. "Dean, can I tell you something?"

"Yeah, of course. What's up, Gracie?"

Her stomach dropped as she felt the words catching in her throat. He'd wanted a normal life for so long now. "I - I can't - I love you, Dean, and I want you to know this isn't your fault."

"Gracie -" Both of them sat up, Grace reaching out for his hand.

She stared out at the dark water as she talked, trying not to look over at him. "When Michael zapped us back to the bunker, well, it's easy for angels to transport one person, or two people, or whatever. It's not hard for Cas to disassemble our atoms and put them back the right way. But the kids and I, that was a different story. That's why he aged them up, so he could transport us all safely. I think it was one last bit of your free will that forced him to do it. It would've killed us otherwise. But that's not supposed to happen. It's against nature, but he did it to save us. You did it to save us." Dean listened patiently, letting her take her time to get to her actual point. "I don't exactly understand it, but part of that... I can't have kids anymore, Dean. The sheer power of an archangel irradiated us. It's honestly a miracle we made it, but I can't - Cas could tell, somehow. You know he can tell when we're getting sick, it's the same thing. I'm sorry."

Dean looked at her softly, noticing the tears rolling down her face in the moonlight. "Gracie, it's okay. I just... I'm glad you're alright."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you can't have the normal life you've wanted for so long now. I'm sorry you can't have the family you deserve. We were so close. We were almost out. We were almost happy, and then -"

"Hey." He reached out, gently turning her chin to face him. "I'm already happy. Hell, I'm scared out of my mind about Chuck, but right now, I'm happy. I'm happy I get to help people, I'm happy I get to see my brother and my best friend so often, and I'm happy that I get to wake up next to you every day," he told her. "I'm happy we found you again. I'm happy you decided to stay. I'm happy that I get to love you, Gracie." He pulled her into a hug, saying, "We don't have to worry about it, not now. When all of this is over, if we make it out, we can figure something out then. If we still want to settle down, to have that house with a yard and a dog and everything, maybe we can figure out a little witchcraft then. But for now we don't have to think about it. I don't want you to worry about it. We have too much to worry about already."

"You're not mad? Disappointed?"

Dean kissed her cheek, promising that, "It's not good news, but I love you, Gracie. I always will. Hey, I was made for loving you, baby." A smile played at the corner of his mouth as he resisted the urge to continue the song. "He could've killed you, but he got you out of there alive, and I'm always going to be thankful for that. Even if we can't have our own kids, we have Jack. And I'm sure we'll have Sam and Eileen's, the way that's going. And Cas, he's practically a baby in a trenchcoat." He felt Grace laugh as he held onto her. Good. If he could still get her to smile, all hope wasn't lost. "Seriously, though, I love you, Gracie."

"I love you too, Dean." Dean looked at his watch, seeing that it was after midnight. "What are you doing?"

"Happy anniversary," he answered.

The two of them sat there for a little while longer, finally getting back in the car when Grace realized they wouldn't make it home until at least 3 AM if they didn't leave soon. She fell asleep on the drive home, Dean trying to avoid the potholes in the road. He shook her shoulder when they were safely in the bunker's garage, the two of them sneaking inside just like they used to, when they'd get back to Bobby's way too late. As they settled into bed, Grace reached out for Dean, still half-asleep. "Happy anniversary, Dean. I love you."

"I love you too." He kissed the top of her head, Grace falling asleep almost instantly, but not before she cast the same spell she would cast every night to help him sleep. He would stare at the ceiling for a while before he dozed off, thinking about her and Chuck and the uncertainties that lay ahead of them.