Giving Grace a quick kiss goodbye, Dean raced to catch up with Sam, who was already out of the door and halfway in the car. They'd managed to track Amara down to Atlantic City, and they were bent on getting there before she realized they were coming. Cas and Jack, meanwhile, had gone to investigate a murder in Missouri. It would get Jack out of the bunker for a bit, and Grace reasoned that Cas needed the outing too.
It hadn't been this quiet in the bunker for a while. So Grace put on some music, threw a load of laundry in the wash, and went to work. If Billie truly had a plan that she knew could take down Chuck, Grace had to trust her. But there was still a lot that she could do. If Mrs. Butters was able to mix a smoothie together that would weaken Jack, there had to be a way to do the opposite. So she set up at the kitchen table, swabbing one of the glasses Mrs. Butters had left behind and started to try to break down the ingredients. Once she figured out what was in them, she could cobble together something that would strengthen him. Hopefully.
As she waited for the results of a couple of tests, Grace started to catch up on all of the phone calls and emails she'd been putting off. It hadn't been long before her phone rang again. "Hey, Cas, what's up? Are you there already?"
"There are no more demon deals happening," Cas began. Grace could tell that he was driving, Jack fiddling with the radio in the background. "Rowena's put a stop to them all for now. There's also been another death."
"Any leads?" Grace asked, sitting back in her chair. "Or any word on what's going on with the demons?"
"Not yet," Cas frowned, "but we're working on it. We're headed to the second crime scene now. I'll send you some photos when we get there."
After she had hung up with Cas and Jack, Grace checked on her experiments again. One of them had turned bright blue, Grace inspecting it carefully. "Yarrow." She nodded to herself, writing it down on the whiteboard they kept on the fridge.
The next few hours were spent between research and getting the bunker back together. In the middle of the end of the world, little, normal, human things tended to go out of the window. Laundry, grocery shopping, dishes. She collected cups and plates from all over, running the dishwasher for the first time in a while. The blood and dirt had to be washed out of their monster-hunting clothes, and Grace had to put together a grocery list so she could force Dean to eat a vegetable.
Eileen called to say hi, and before she knew it, the sun had gone down and it was well into the night. Grace wasn't terribly tired, so she stayed up, continuing to work and get things done. She loved her boys, but it was nice to have everyone out of the bunker for a little while. She got so much more done when Jack wasn't interrupting to ask her a research question, when Cas wasn't appearing over her shoulder, when Sam wasn't trying to bounce ideas off of her, when Dean wasn't wandering into her office to see what she was doing every five minutes.
Her phone rang again as she was gathering another pile of books to go through, thinking she'd try to finish the row in the next few days if the world didn't start ending again. "Dean, hey. How's the drive going?"
"We're still a day out from New Jersey," he reported, checking the next road sign he saw. "Sammy's asleep. He's been knocked out cold since we passed Decatur. How are you?"
"Fine. About to start logging more of the Men of Letters' records. Either those or I'll switch to a book on the Watchers." She held her phone to her ear with her shoulder, deftly carrying the crate of books back to her office. "You know I love talking to you, but it sounds like there's something on your mind."
Dean was silent for a moment, the hum of the Impala the only noise in the air. "Do you remember that old iron bridge near Bobby's?"
"The one you used to go diving off of every summer? Every time you visited I thought you were going to crack your head open when we went out there." She set the box down, logging into her computer and putting him on speaker. "You always told me you weren't afraid of it, that the water was deep enough, that no one had ever gotten hurt there. I remember thinking you were an idiot."
"Yeah, well, I lied," Dean confessed. "I wanted to impress you. Dumb stuff, I know. But what can I say, I was a kid. We both were."
"Dean, what does this have to do with anything?"
"I'm worried about setting Amara up for her own death. I don't want to have to lie to her. It was scary enough lying to you and jumping off that bridge, but I - lying to God's sister is a whole different ball game. She could snap her fingers and dust us, and then," he sighed, saying, "then it would be up to you, Cas, and Jack."
"That's not going to happen," she assured him as she got up to head to the kitchen again. The last of her experiments should be done soon. "She won't hurt you. You brought her back."
"And I'm going to get her killed," Dean stressed.
As Grace dropped a match into the bowl of ingredients she had been preparing, she told him not to worry. "She trusts you. All you have to do is go with it. Be confident in whatever you tell her, and try to sell her on helping us. Who knows, we might have a way to do this without killing her. You just have to trust yourself. I know it's hard for you, but you have to try."
"I love you, Gracie."
"I love you too."
"You idjit, you're going to get yourself killed like that," Bobby called down into the river. Dean had just appeared in the water, waving up at the bridge.
Grace sat on the riverbank, watching both of them. She had recognized Bobby's truck as he drove by, but she hadn't expected him to stop. Dean was in the middle of a swan dive when he pulled over to the side of the bridge to yell at him.
Dean was fine. He was always fine. But it still worried Grace, watching him free fall all the way down into the water. She hadn't ever taken him up on the offer of diving from there herself. There were rocks in the river, and some parts of it were a lot more shallow than others. That didn't stop Dean, though. Bobby got back in his truck and drove away, but she knew they would hear about it when they got back.
When Grace was at Bobby's, Dean would find every excuse to come and visit, to spend a couple of lazy summer days with her before heading off on another hunt. His dad would let him take whatever cases sounded promising, and so far, he hadn't caught on to the fact that Dean would take every case near South Dakota he could when summertime rolled around. Of course Bobby would let him stay, and he and Grace would be inseparable as long as he was in town.
"He's right, you're going to crack your head open," Grace frowned as he got out of the river.
"I've been fine so far." He gave her a hug, covering her in the cold river water.
"Eew, Dean, I'm already dry," she laughed, the two of them drying off and resolving to grab dinner somewhere before heading back to Bobby's.
Grace thought about those summers a lot. Their biggest worries back then were ghosts and vampires, when salting and burning something was the easy answer. Their tough problems were hunting down cursed objects, not trying to kill Chuck without him figuring out their plot.
When she finally went to bed, she was still thinking of the simpler times, when Dean (and sometimes Sam too) would visit her at Bobby's, when they would all go hunting together. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
After almost an entire day, Grace had perfected the recipe she had been working on, finding the exact opposites of everything in the potion Mrs. Butters had concocted and hunting down what she thought were the right words for the final spell that would make Jack stronger than he had been before. Even if it only helped a little, it would be something. And they needed all the help they could get.
Sam and Dean got back that night, right as Grace was closing her office door and thinking of heading to bed. "Hey," Dean smiled, coming to give her a hug as soon as he dropped his bag at the bottom of the stairs.
"Hi, you. You're back early."
"She found us early," Dean shrugged. "But I think she's on board. Most likely. She's thinking about it."
"Good. How are you two holding up?"
"As good as we can," Sam shrugged. "Amara seems like she's willing to help take Chuck down, but you never know. She might already be a step or two ahead of us. She found us before we got to New Jersey, so I wouldn't put it past her to already know what's going on."
Sam and Dean ended up staying up for a while, both of them too wired to go to sleep right away. She could hear Sam starting a load of laundry as she got ready for bed, the brothers staying up to talk in the war room. Even though she tossed and turned for a while, Grace ended up falling asleep before Dean came in.
When Grace woke up, she found the other side of the bed empty. It was still perfectly made. Somehow, Dean hadn't made it to bed. She shrugged it off, thinking he had fallen asleep on the couch or something. By the time she was up and functioning and headed to her office, though, she was starting to wonder where he was. Probably lurking somewhere in the bunker. If they'd gotten another call, he would have at least texted to tell her that he was leaving again.
It didn't take Dean long to find her. He'd changed into his pajamas, but he'd never made it to bed. He wandered into her office, a bottle of whiskey in hand, almost as soon as she'd settled in to work on one of the Men of Letters' files. "Have you been up drinking all night?" she asked, looking him over as he walked in.
"Nah, I just started." He sat on the corner of her desk, watching her work for a moment. "I think Amara's down. But if she finds out, she's going to kill us. Or worse. I've got a bad feeling about this, Gracie."
"I know." She reached for his hand, saying, "I've got a bad feeling about all of it, but this is what we've got to do."
A.N.: I've gone absolutely feral and written all the way to the end of the story, so I'm probably going to be posting a lot more often :)
