Dean walked out of his room to find Grace hunched over her laptop, huddled in a blanket and zeroed in on research. "What are you working on?"
She switched tabs immediately. "Hey." Sam and Cas hand managed to cure him, expelling the demon and leaving Dean as his normal self. He had a hazy memory of her coming to find him, but there were still things he couldn't properly place. "It's nothing. How are you feeling?"
"I'd feel better if you ever came to bed. I'm convinced you haven't slept in three days." He waited, adding, "You haven't slept in my room since I got back. I understand if you don't trust me. Sam took care of the demon, but I still have the Mark. But Grace, you've got to talk to me. Sam says you disappeared for months. He tried to call you. A lot. I know you were hunting me down, but -"
"It's not that I don't trust you," she said, staring at her computer screen. She could see him gently resting a hand on the back of her chair as she talked. "I don't trust myself. I need to tell you something, but you have to promise me you won't panic."
He moved his hand to her shoulder, offering a comforting, "Anything." Grace finally looked up at him, blinking and allowing her eyes to turn black for a second. "That wasn't a demon hallucination."
"I tried this spell that was supposed to force Crowley to talk to me, but instead of going to him, I landed myself in Hell. This demon, she, she needed a vessel, and I needed to get out. So she's kind of glued herself to me."
"I hate to say it, but you probably shouldn't just be out here. Demons double-cross us all the time." Dean started stacking her books up, saying, "Let's go make the dungeon as comfortable as possible. It's probably the best idea for all of us if you're down there until we find out how to get rid of this thing. I don't think curing it will be as easy as curing me was."
Grace obeyed, though the demon was screaming at her to stop. Within a few hours, Dean had helped her move a bunch of books into the dungeon and set up an area to work. He'd carried in a bunch of pillows and blankets and made her a makeshift desk. She had everything she needed to live and work down there indefinitely. Dean disappeared to fill Sam in on what was going on, and both of them returned around dinner time so they could eat with her on the other side of the door.
Around eleven, Dean stood up, telling Grace that he would be right back. She raised an eyebrow when he came back in his pajamas, carrying an armful of blankets. "What are you doing?"
"I'm not going to leave you down here in the dungeon alone overnight," he explained as he set himself up next to the door.
"Dean, I'm not afraid of the dark," she laughed, standing at the door to watch him.
"It gets lonely down here, trust me. You'd start thinking about how we're all three or four floors away, and how you're locked in there with yourself, not knowing if you're going to turn or not. You kept me company, at least until Crowley knocked you out. I'm doing the same thing for you." He stopped, turning to look at her through the door. "It's nice not being alone down here. I'd offer to stay in there with you, but I don't think Sam and Cas would approve. They're both in the library looking for a cure. Or literally any information on her. Personally I think we'd be fine, but her plus the Mark… not a good idea."
"She's actually a fan of your work in Hell," Grace confessed. "Speaking of which, do you want me to try to cast that spell on you so you can sleep and not dream about Alastair? I think I can do it through the door."
Dean leaned his forehead on the cool metal, Grace raising her hand and mumbling a few words. "We'll see if it works."
Grace managed to fall asleep relatively quickly on the cot that was set up in the dungeon. Dean, on the other hand, spent a restless night sleeping in front of the door. It wasn't the dreams that kept him awake. Grace's spell had worked. It was the dungeon. He'd definitely slept in worse places, but the dungeon didn't remind him of any happy memories. Besides, all he could do was toss and turn and think of how Grace had literally gone to Hell and back to help him, and now he was powerless to do anything.
Near one in the morning, Dean got up, creeping over to the stairs and up to the library. "How's she doing?" Sam asked, looking up from his book.
"About as good as you'd expect. She's not turning, but she's also not having a great time in the dungeon. She just gets me back, and we have to throw her down there now. Not the best thing. At least Mickey Mouse is a friendly demon. Want some help?"
"Dude, you need to rest. I'll find something."
"Can't sleep, Sammy." Dean grabbed a book from the top of the pile Sam had stacked up earlier. Without another word, he sat down across from his brother, cracking the book open and starting to read.
It was nearly four in the morning when Sam went to bed, Dean heading back down to the dungeon soon after. He checked to make sure Grace was still asleep before settling down in his spot. The last few hours had been productive only in weeding out sources. There wasn't a lot of lore on Miczael at all, at least not in anything from recent memory. Sam was going to start working through the oldest books in their collection in the morning. Hopefully they would find something there.
Nearly a week passed like that, the boys going through as much lore as they could while Grace sat in the dungeon, thankful that she had WiFi down there. She'd been going through digitized versions of old books while Sam and Dean pored over the Men of Letters' collection on demonology. It was getting late when Dean asked her to perform the usual spell, but Grace stopped for a second. She'd had an idea. "Dean, if I cast a protection spell around you, I don't think I'll be able to hurt you. You don't have to -" She stopped, Dean already opening the door.
"Do it. I'll take my chances." He nearly flinched at her touch, he hadn't felt it in so long. A shimmering purple light started at the top of his head, dripping down his body and eventually encasing him in a hazy purple glow.
"You're not invincible at all, but it's something. And it's only a couple of atoms thick, so you can -" Dean pulled her into a hug before she could finish.
"I'm sorry you're going through this too," he whispered, Grace wrapping her arms around him. "It's not fun being trapped down here."
The two of them managed to squeeze onto the cot together, Dean finally being able to fall asleep for the first time in ages. As a demon he'd hardly needed to sleep, and since he got back, he'd hardly wanted to. But having Grace there, demon or not, made him feel better than he had in months. It was only when Sam found them in the morning that he had to worry again.
"I'm not going to bother yelling at you," Sam sighed, coming into the dungeon with a plastic bag full of ingredients. Grace sat up, looking around. "Miczael became a demon because she messed up a spell. I found it, and we've got everything you need. I don't know if this'll work at all, but if you do the spell backwards, it might work."
Grace nodded, taking the bag from him. She encased him in purple light too, telling the boys they needed to get out if she was going to try anything. "I can do it. Magic works like that at times, but if I accidentally rip a hole in reality, you're better off outside."
She set everything up on the floor, carefully measuring out each ingredient. Turning to the book in front of her, she read everything over, figuring out how to do it exactly backwards. With a final glance at the boys, who were standing outside, she got to work. The demon was screaming inside her head to stop, so she had to tune the rest of the world out, biting her tongue as she focused on one thing at a time, moving deliberately.
A piece of my hair. She plucked a few strands from her scalp, dropping them into the bowl before her. It was a Herculean effort, the demon trying to slow her down the entire time. But she was powerful enough to keep going, even though it felt like she was pushing back against a brick wall. Lemon juice. A rat. Cardamom. An orange blossom. She dropped a match into the bowl, everything beginning to smoke. Carefully, she began to speak the spell backwards. "Inferno ipso ab quae sapientiam at scientam et potestatem mihi da est visus non."
She waited as the flames turned green, and then an angry red. Looking back to the boys, she shrugged, her chest suddenly tightening as she crumpled to the ground, the entire room being enveloped in red smoke as the demon fled back to Hell. Dean made it to her first. "She's got a pulse. It's not great, but she's got one. What do we do now? Sammy?"
Sam shook his head. "I have no idea. We call Cas, see if he can tell us what's wrong with her. I'm no expert on demonic medicine, but I think it's safe to say that she needs some healing time."
They carried her upstairs, Cas meeting them in her room. He held a hand to her forehead, saying, "She's going to be alright, but I need to make sure she stays knocked out for a while. I can heal her, but this kind of healing takes time."
"How much time?" Dean asked, sitting down on the bed beside her.
"A week, maybe two or three."
"Not a great time estimate, Cas."
"I don't have that much grace left, but for your Grace, I'll give her what I can. Possession by a demon that powerful, even if she wasn't malevolent, takes a toll on the body, even the perfect vessel. It's not like angel possession. If it's from Hell, it inherently eats away at the vessel if it's a good person. Lucifer being the exception," he said, looking to Sam. "She'll be asleep for a while, but she's also going to be safe from any external threat. This entire bunker could crash down around her and she'd be fine."
Sam and Cas left Dean with Grace while they went to talk in the hallway, strategizing about how to get Cas his grace back and about how to get the Mark of Cain off of Dean for good. Meanwhile, Dean sat next to Grace, the effects of her protective spell waning. He could still touch her, despite Cas' warning, so he reached out for her hand, apologizing again for dragging her into this mess. He could've sworn she smiled the slightest bit, but he was distracted, the Mark starting to sting again.