Every muscle in her body was stiff when Grace finally sat up. Instinctively, she reached for her phone. She'd been out for three weeks. Lovely. She stood cautiously, stretching and trying to get her bearings back. Ugh, I need to brush my teeth. When she emerged from the bathroom, she went to change, deciding on another pair of pajamas. Best to take things slow for a while. Sam and Dean hadn't left a note saying otherwise, so she assumed they were somewhere in the bunker.
Stepping into the hall, Grace immediately knew something was wrong. Half of the lights were out. As she made her way down the hall, she noticed a bloody streak on the wall. Retreating back into her room, she grabbed her gun from where it had been stowed under her bed. Cautiously stepping back into the hall, she followed the trail of blood until she stood in the middle of the bunker.
It was a bloodbath. Bodies she didn't recognize were strewn across the ground. "Put the gun down," came Dean's voice from around the corner. She complied, turning to see Sam and Cas standing amid even more blood. Dean was covered in it, murder in his eyes.
Her heart sunk as she realized what had happened. "Dean -"
"I'm sorry you had to wake up like this, but Gracie, if any of you come after me, the same thing is going to happen to you. If I see any of you again, I'll slaughter you all." He stepped over the body in front of him, Sam and Cas about to block him. He brushed past them, coming to stand in front of Grace.
She held her breath in disbelief. "I thought… Dean, we can find a way to fix this. We can find a way to get rid of the Mark for good, please. What about the dogs and the house and -"
"It's over, Grace. Cain won. Now you stay out of my way, and I promise I won't hurt you. Stay out of my way, and I'll stay away from you. Cain killed his wife, and I… I can't risk doing that to you. Just don't come after me." He leaned in to kiss her, leaving Grace covered in blood as he left the bunker.
Sam was the first to speak, coming to give her a hug. He was already covered in blood. "It's good to see you again. He… he slaughtered too many innocent people, he just couldn't help himself. And then… Cas and I will take care of this. Go take a shower. We can make something to eat if you're hungry, and then we need to bring you up to speed."
"Dean told me he thought he was losing," she said numbly, "but I didn't realize…"
"He wanted to keep it from you. He thought he could keep fighting it," Cas explained. "Go. Clean yourself off, We can take care of this."
The last six months had been a blur. She'd been unconscious for part of it, and in Hell for more. She'd missed so much. As she stood under the hot water, she thought of how she'd missed Dean getting worse and worse, missed him turning, losing control over the Mark and how it had corrupted him. Now he was gone, and they were getting closer to decoding the Book of the Damned for answers, but things had taken a turn for the worst. She missed the days when their biggest enemy was an average vampire or tulpa. Fighting angels and demons was so much more complicated.
"Grace?" Cas was standing in her room, looking around. "Sam wants to know if you're drowning yourself in the shower. That's not the wisest idea, but -" Grace turned the water off, Cas stopping to stare at the photograph she kept next to her bed. When she emerged from her bathroom wrapped in an old robe, he held the photo up, observing, "This is you and Dean."
She nodded, squeezing the water out of her hair with a towel. "Yeah. I think I was seventeen in that photo. Sam took it while we were out on a hunting trip."
"I didn't realize you had known him for that long," Cas said contemplatively, setting the photo back down. "I know he dreamt about you sometimes, but I never realized who you were."
"We've known each other for most of our lives, on and off, at least."
"We're going to cure him," Cas assured her. "Sam says you need to eat something first, though." He left her alone to get ready, throwing her bloody clothes into the laundry basket. Magically cleaning them was easy enough, and the magic saved the boys from constantly having to go shopping.
In the kitchen, she found Sam and Cas pulling things out of the fridge, trying to figure out what they could make with what they had left. Sam settled on making breakfast for dinner, Grace filling up the coffee pot as he started frying eggs. With her help, Cas managed to make pancakes that weren't terribly burnt, a feat for an angel who had never needed to cook in his thousands of years of life. They worked in silence for a while, Sam finally beginning to fill her in on what she had missed when their coffee had brewed.
"I should've been there to help," she sighed, pouring milk into her coffee. "Maybe if I hadn't been an idiot and gotten myself stuck in Hell, I could've been there for him."
"You wouldn't have been able to overpower the Mark," Cas assured her, earning a frown from Sam. "It wouldn't have made any difference.
"Very reassuring, Cas." Grace leaned against the countertop, looking to Sam instead. "I just wish I hadn't missed so much."
"Cas is right. Our best shot is the Book of the Damned. Rowena and Charlie are almost done with it, so we should have something to work with soon. Honestly, with what you missed, you're probably better off. I don't want to say he's turned into a monster, but if most other hunters catch him, that's what they're going to think. If any of this gets out, they'll shoot on sight."
"That won't do anything," Cas said, rummaging around to find forks and knives.
Grace took a sip of her coffee, trying not to snap back at the angel. It wasn't his fault that he was still warming up to humans. The boys had helped a lot, but he was still far more practical and didn't quite understand the nuances of humanity. "So what do we do now?"
"We give him a bit of a head start while Rowena and Charlie work, and then Cas and I go after him. We get that Mark off of him for good. How many eggs do you want?"
"I'll stick with pancakes," Grace answered, already wondering where Dean was. "I think I'm going to see if I can hack his phone and get him to share his location with us. Actually, I don't know why we don't have all of our locations shared anyway. It would make things a lot easier. Not if we get separated from our phones, but it's a start," she thought aloud. "I'm sure I can rig a tracking spell to tie our locations together. What's hacking if not a bit of computer magic?"
Sam had to make a tough call as they ate, broaching the subject as gently as he could. "I think you should stay here. When it's time to hunt him down, I mean. Cas did a great job healing you, but you're not in fighting shape yet. And if anything happens to us, we're going to need backup." He reached for the pepper, adding, "I know you want to help. And believe me, we want your help, but -"
"Somebody needs to manage the bunker. I get it. We've got calls coming in from across the county. I'm sure I've got over a thousand emails in my inbox. I'm behind on a lot, and you did a great job picking up the slack, but there's a lot I need to do. You boys find him and bring him home. I'll be here. Now do we have any more syrup?"
Sam and Cas would disappear, tracking down different leads and checking up on Charlie and Rowena. They'd be gone for a few hours, or a few days, and appear back in the bunker at all hours. Grace, meanwhile, fell into a cycle of research. She would sit up late into the night, answering her backlog of emails and trying to sort through lore on the Mark of Cain, hoping that she might stumble on something helpful. She checked in with Charlie and Rowena every afternoon, keeping track of their progress. Sam and Cas would check in when they could, but she made sure to ping their phones at least once a day to know where they were, even if they didn't have time to call. She'd even managed to program a setting that told her when Cas was in Heaven so he didn't just disappear off the map with no warning.
Around two or three in the morning, she would call it quits, heading to bed for a couple of hours before doing it all again. Occasionally she'd leave for groceries, or switch up her routine by taking a book to the gym, or do something as wild as washing a bunch of laundry. But most of the time she was in front of her computer with books and papers stacked all around her. Obsessively checking her phone for messages from Dean, she would always smile when he sent something, no matter what it was. When he could wrestle control from the Mark, he would text her brief updates, letting her know that even if he'd left a trail of destruction in his wake, he was okay.
Most of the time she was fielding questions from other hunters, compiling research like always. Whenever the phone would ring, she was a supervisory agent, a government representative, or anyone else they needed her to be. Only rarely was it Sam or Cas, calling with an update. But lately they hadn't been answering their phones. She wasn't worried - she had been tracking them after all - but when Dean's phone popped up next to Sam's, she knew something was up.
Against her better judgement, she closed her laptop, looking around the empty bunker. Charlie hadn't checked in for days. Sam wasn't answering his phone, and Cas was nowhere to be found either. It was time. She headed to her room, changing into hunting clothes before throwing more into a bag, lacing up her boots, and grabbing her keys. There was no way to know for sure if something had gone wrong, but their last known location wasn't too far, just an hour's drive or so. It wouldn't hurt to check it out. Besides, she hadn't been on a hunt in too long.
When she walked back into the war room, Cas was standing there, looking disheveled. "You need to stay here."
"You came all the way for Heaven to tell me that? You guys really don't want me to go anywhere, do you?"
Cas shook his head. "You're safer in here. Charlie's dead. Dean's… Something big got out. Something we've never seen before. Something apocalyptic. It's called the Darkness."
It was a lot of information for her to process at once. "Charlie how? The Darkness? Any more specifics?"
"We heard horror stories about it in Heaven. We - most of us didn't think it was real."
Grace set her bag down on a table. "What is it?"
"Power. Pure destructive power. As old as God himself, and, well, we're alone on this one. He hasn't come back yet. Sam and Dean are working on it, but we need you to find out everything you can. I'm going to search Heaven for answers. We need someone down here." He vanished in a flurry of wings, leaving Grace to wonder if anything in life was real anymore.