"Where's Dean?" Jack asked, walking into Grace's office. "Have you seen him?"

She took her headphones off, noticing how panicked the boy looked. "Nice to see you too. He's out working on his car. At least he was about an hour ago. What's going on?"

Jack closed the door, telling her that, "I found the file on Mrs. Butters. She's been hiding it. She didn't just work here. She was trained to defend the bunker from anyone who posed a danger to the Men of Letters. She... she can decapitate people."

Grace logged out of her laptop, following him out of her office. "Go check the garage. I'll check the kitchen." She turned the corner, almost immediately running into Mrs. Butters on her way to the war room. "Oh, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"You look like you've seen a ghost, my dear," Mrs. Butters observed. "Is everything alright?"

"I - Have you seen Dean? I need to talk to him."

"What's wrong, Gracie?" Dean asked, appearing behind Mrs. Butters. He had materialized out of nowhere.

"Dean, I, uh, Mrs. Butters, can we have a moment?" She glanced between the two of them, sincerely hoping that Mrs. Butters would take the hint and leave them alone.

Her eyes widened as she realized what was likely on Grace's mind. The nymph smiled, giving her a soft nod and whispering a, "congratulations, dear" before she left the room. Dean immediately looked to Grace, his eyes full of hope, but she shook her head, saying that it was something far more serious.

"So she's a weapon?" Dean asked, the two of them sitting at the furthest table from the door. Grace nodded, looking back over her shoulder. "I'll go talk to her. She's protecting the bunker, so she shouldn't hurt us, but we need to get to the bottom of this. If she didn't tell us about that, I wonder what else she's hiding."

Reaching for his arm as he got up, Grace stopped him. "Dean, be careful. I don't remember much lore on wood nymphs, but we know she's dangerous. She might not want to hurt you now, but everyone lashes out when they're threatened."

As Dean went to find Mrs. Butters, Grace went back to her office to see if she could dig up any lore on wood nymphs. She also ran a search through all of the Men of Letters' records that she'd digitized so far, just in case she'd logged anything on Mrs. Butters ages ago and had forgotten about it. She didn't start to worry until it had been nearly half an hour and she hadn't heard a word from Dean. The bunker wasn't small, but it was small enough that he should have found Mrs. Butters by now. So she got up, heading back to the war room.

Sam and Mrs. Butters were standing there, Sam taking his tie off as he talked. "How was your date?" Grace asked, giving them a smile. Dean and Jack were nowhere in sight. "Wait, have you two seen Dean? I've been trying to find him and he's not answering his phone. He went to go find something or other and never came back."

"Oh, he's in the dungeon," Mrs. Butters eerily chipped in.

"What?" Sam was completely out of the loop, but Grace was expecting something like this. At least he was alright.

"Jack is dangerous. I know what he is. He's a danger to all of us. Your poor brother, Jack's gotten to him. Hopefully we can get him back, but Jack needs to go." She looked between the two of them, neither of their faces betraying the conversation that they were having. Sam and Grace had long been able to say a whole lot with one look, and now was no different.

"You think we can help Dean?" Grace asked, forcing a slight tremble in her voice. "It's not too late for him?"

"I think so," Mrs. Butters offered. "But I need your help to kill Jack first."

Grace was the first one to suggest anything. She took a deep breath and looked between them. "Well, we're going to need some weapons then, aren't we, Sam?"

"Yeah. Let's go, uh, get geared up."

While Sam split off and went towards his room, Grace snuck down to the basement. She was a few steps from the dungeon when she heard a small cough behind her. Without hesitation, she pulled her gun, spinning around to find the nymph standing there. "I should've known. Even if he hadn't gotten to you, I know what you are. I've always known. I can sense it."

"Oh really?" Hoping that Sam would come down the stairs behind them, Grace kept her gun trained on the nymph. "What's that?"

"Almost as bad as that nephilim in there. A horrible Frankenstein's monster of a demon and a human, cobbled together in hopes that one of you would survive getting out of Hell. You're so wound together that you don't belong here on Earth or down in Hell. You stink of it, of all of the demons you spent so much time with. Like that nephilim boy, there's no good place for you."

Grace shrugged, keeping her eyes trained on the nymph. "Here's good."

Mrs. Butters shrugged, lifting her hand. Before Grace could fire, her vision went black.

The next thing she saw was the floor of the panic room, the dungeon where they would lock up any creature, cryptid or human, that they knew to be dangerous. The red emergency lights swept over her, Grace sitting up slowly. It felt like she had been run through a washing machine, everything aching as she got to her feet. She was no longer the young woman in her twenties who would break down doors and chase after monsters. But something was definitely wrong. Her gun was still in the hallway, someone having broken the door down and left her there. All of the bullets were still in it.

So she crept through the bunker, taking the stairs as quickly as she could. There was some sort of commotion in the bunker, several voices overlapping as the boys begged Mrs. Butters not to kill Jack. Her gun trained on the wood nymph, she stepped into the war room, inching as close as she could while the boys kept talking, keeping Mrs. Butters occupied once they registered that she was approaching.

"You can't kill him. We need him. He's going to save the world," Dean coughed, Grace taking a couple of steps towards them.

"How?"

"Like this." Grace reached out, sharing a deluge of her memories with Mrs. Butters before the nymph could stop her.

Chuck telling them that they were all part of a bigger story, that everything they knew had been written for them, that free will hardly existed at all, not when you were a Winchester. The countless nights she and Dean sat up talking about what was real and what wasn't. Everything they had lost, everything they had sacrificed, to find some sort of safety for their family, and then losing that too. Billie appearing in the bunker, right where they stood now, telling them that she was sure Jack could kill Chuck. Grace, Sam, and Dean sitting in the war room talking about Chuck, about what they could do, about how they had to fight him no matter what. Even if it cost them their lives. They would have to go through with it.

When Grace finally pulled her hand back, Mrs. Butters was in tears. "Do you see it now? He's our only hope."

Mrs. Butters left them a few hours later. Still shaken, she decided to return to her forest, to ensure that it was protected and to hide out from what she saw as the next apocalypse. She had wished them all luck, but Grace could tell that she was too worried to stay there. She could face off with any threat to the bunker, and she had, but fighting Chuck himself was way out of the realm of possibility. Grace couldn't blame her.

By the time they all went to sleep, it was well into the early hours of the morning. "Gracie, I didn't want to leave you there, but -"

"I know." Grace rolled over in bed, smiling at how exhausted Dean looked. "It was safer there than in the war room. I know. I understand. It's fine, Dean."

"Okay. As long as you know I wouldn't have left you there unless I knew it was a hundred percent safe." He pulled her into a kiss, apologizing again. "Gracie, there's something I've been thinking about."

"Hmm?"

"It's always been my job to protect Sam, to protect you. But I don't think I'm going to be able to do that, not against Chuck," he confessed. Dean stared at the ceiling, trying not to look at her even as she held onto him. "I have a feeling that if anything happens, we're all going down. Chuck's not going to let us live if we mess this thing up. I'm sorry, Gracie. I'm sorry I dragged you into all of this when you had managed to get out. I'm sorry I keep putting you in danger. I'm sorry if -"

"Dean." She cut him off, sitting up to force him to look at her. "I knew this was a dangerous life when I got into it. And when I got back into it. I knew what I was doing, what I was getting into when I married you. If this is how we go out, this is how we go out. Ever since you and your dad saved us from those vamps, I knew things wouldn't be easy. You've said it so many times - you've got to be sure you know what you're doing, because once you get into this life, you don't get out of it easily. And when you're this into it, you don't ever get out. Hunters don't get old. Maybe we were never meant to get out at all. Dean, I'm just glad... I'm glad we made it this far. I'm glad we've had so long. I'm glad we're still here, even if Chuck shows up tomorrow."

"He better not," Dean yawned, pulling her back down beside him. "We need some sleep. And I'm not letting go of you for a while."