Texarkana, TX - 2001
The rain drummed steadily on the Impala's roof as Grace read, a textbook propped on her knees. She'd squished herself into the passenger seat but was twisted around to face Dean, who had his feet up on the dashboard. They'd been parked for a few hours, going over question after question as the moon began to rise. "Why do we have a 22nd Amendment?"
"Because we needed something between the 21st and the 23rd," Dean quipped. "It limits presidents to two terms. FDR got elected four times, and we don't want the same president forever."
"Good." She flipped the page, scanning the next section. "If 10x plus 2 is 7, what is 2x?"
"Uh, point five."
She nodded, picking out another question. "What country put the first satellite in space?"
"Russia. Soviet Union?"
"The book calls it Russia, but you're right." Grace grinned, meeting his eye as she asked, "Who was Led Zeppelin's drummer?"
"John Bonham. There's no way that's on the test," Dean laughed, Grace setting the book down on the floor as she reached for her drink.
"Even if it isn't, you're still passing with flying colors. Want some?"
Dean took a sip of her soda, saying, "Thank you for doing this. And for not looking at me differently."
"Why would I? Your dad pulled you out of school in your senior year because he thought he had a lead on the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and then he dragged you halfway across the country on a bunch of hunting trips to distract himself from losing the demon again," she shrugged. "There's no way I can blame you for not graduating on time."
"Still, the valedictorian helping a high school dropout study for the GED?"
"Almost like it's meant to be," Grace smiled.
"Hey, I was made for lovin' you, baby," he nodded to the radio, turning the volume up.
Glancing at the back seat, she raised an eyebrow. "Want to take a break?"
"We're supposed to be on a stakeout," Dean countered. "Not that I wouldn't want to -" They were interrupted by a knock on the window, Dean rolling it down to see his friend Lee holding an umbrella. Grace stashed the book under her seat.
"My turn to take over. Not sure how much I'll see, but I'll give you a call if anything comes up."
"Thanks, man. We've got the room next to you, so just knock when it's time for breakfast." He rolled the window up, glancing at Grace as they started to drive and Lee took their stakeout spot. "So about that study break…"
Lebanon, KS - Present Day
Dean had been awake for a few hours, scrolling through his phone as Grace slept. Eventually she rolled over, reaching out for him. "Hey." He leaned down to kiss her, suggesting, "Why don't you get up and grab some breakfast?"
"Mkay." She sat up in bed, yawning and turning to him. "You're already all cleaned up."
"Yeah, I, uh, want to go for a drive. Clear my head, you know? But I sat down to tie my shoes and you held on to me and kind of didn't let me go for a while."
She laughed, heading into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When the two of them found their way into the kitchen, Grace wrapped in Dean's favorite robe, they were surprised to see Sam and Eileen already up cooking breakfast. "Morning. We've got bacon."
Grace reached for a plate, paying no mind to Dean asking if his brother was hung over. "Look, I'm going to go for a drive and clear my head a bit. Gracie'll be here to help with the Chuck and Lilith stuff." He poured some coffee into a travel mug, kissing Grace goodbye before heading out the door.
"What's that about?" Eileen asked, fixing her own plate.
Setting down her silverware, Grace shrugged, signing, "He's still processing a lot. I think he needed some time away from here."
"It's progress, I guess," Sam said, sitting down across from her.
"Yeah, it's something," Grace sighed, taking a sip of her coffee. "He's been up since five. I don't know what or where, but I think he's working a case on his own." She waved away their concern, saying, "If he thinks he can handle it, he probably can. He needs some room to breathe. I mean, he's got all three of us here now, trying to figure out what the hell to do about Chuck. He's worried about Cas, and it's only been a few months since… everything. I'm surprised I'm not going crazy too." Sam and Eileen shared a glance as Grace cut into her food.
The three of them spent the next several hours poring over books. Grace eventually got her laptop out, running a search of her massive database while she read. They would take breaks to get up, stretch, and walk around the bunker, inevitably coming back with a snack or a drink. When Grace's laptop screen finally flashed red, she closed it, telling the others that there was officially nothing in anything she'd read so far.
No one noticed how late it was getting, or how hungry they were getting, until Grace checked her phone, starting to wonder where Dean was. "Sam." He looked up, noticing how concerned she was. "It's almost dinner time. We've been at this for hours."
"Text him. Eileen and I will get something started for dinner. We could use a break."
As they left the room, Grace stopped them, announcing, "I tracked his phone. He's five hours away, in Texas. He's got to be on a case."
Throughout dinner, Grace kept checking her phone. No calls, no texts, nothing from Dean. A few emails from other hunters, a message from Bobby. Nothing else. She was restless enough to take a book and walk around the library when they all went back to work, finally deciding to ditch the book and give him a call. No answer, of course. Stopping in the doorway of the library, she checked his location again.
"He's in a bar," she groaned, immediately apologizing when she saw Sam reaching for Eileen's hand. "Sorry, I didn't realize I was interrupting -"
Her interruption was interrupted by the bunker door swinging open, a tired and stressed Cas taking the stairs two at a time. "The angels are a mess." All eyes turned to him as he walked up to Sam. "That wound you have, you're linked to Chuck. It explains your visions, it explains everything that's been bothering you for the last few months. We might be able to get through and see where he is, track him down."
Sam glanced at Grace and Eileen, both of them nodding hesitantly. "Let's do it."
As Sam and Cas led the way to the bunker's infirmary, Grace and Eileen hung back, walking a couple of paces behind them. "Do you really think this is a good idea?" Eileen signed, both of them opting to stay silent.
"If it can help us find Chuck, or learn anything about what he has planned, maybe," Grace signed back. Sam was blissfully unaware of their worried conversation, but Cas could tell that neither of them had complete faith in it. "Any information we can get might help."
"I just hope it doesn't hurt Sam."
Grace nodded to her friend as they walked into the infirmary. Unfortunately, their hope was misplaced, to say the least. Everything had been going well until the golden light around Sam's wound flared, sending him careening into the wall. Whether it was the wound or the impact that knocked him out, none of them could be sure. "Sam! Cas?"
Cas shook his head, knowing he couldn't heal a wound like this. "I have an idea, but I'll have to call in a favor." He took off for the hall, already dialing someone.
As Eileen sat down on the bed next to Sam, Grace pulled her phone out too. Still nothing from Dean. And he was still at the bar. She pressed 'call' again, sitting down on the next cot over, but quickly getting up as she went to voicemail again. "Where are you?" Grace's voice quivered as she paced between the cots. "Sam's hurt, and… you're in a bar six hours away, and you're not answering me. Dean, I trust you, I really do. If you're in a bar and not answering me, though, you're either hurt or… or not answering on purpose." Her breath caught in her throat as she finished off the message. "Please call me. I hope you're okay. I love you." She hung up, coming to sit on Sam's other side.
"Is he not answering?" Eileen asked, clutching Sam's hand and trying to keep her finger on his pulse.
"No. He's been gone all day. I assume he took a case, but his location - the last time he picked up his phone was three hours ago at some bar. I trust him. I love him. But he goes running into danger and does stupid, terribly stupid, things when he's overwhelmed. I want to believe he's fine, everything's fine, but…" She trailed off, letting Eileen fill in the blanks.
"You knew them since they were boys, right?"
"Yeah." Grace turned her phone over in her hands as if she was willing it to ring.
"Were they always this way? I know they were raised to be hunters, but were they always," she looked down at Sam, "the way they are?"
Lawrence, KS - 2001
"Surprise!" Grace beamed, holding up a fresh apple pie. "I was going to get a graduation balloon, but I thought that would be a little too much."
"Oh, Gracie, you didn't have to -"
"Of course I did," she smiled. "You graduated, kind of. I mean, you passed your GED test, so you officially graduated."
"Dean! Who's that?!" came a voice from inside the house.
His smile faltered a bit as he turned around to yell back. "It's Grace, Dad!"
"Well invite her in or get out, you know better than to linger in a doorway!"
Dean turned back to her, suggesting, "Why don't we eat out here? I'll go get some plates and stuff. And Sam." He lowered his voice to confess that, "Dad kind of doesn't know I took the test. He'd say it was a waste of money for our kind of work."
"It's not any of your money," Grace frowned. "You literally paid for it with some fraud thing you guys are running."
"I know, but still."
So the three of them - Sam, Dean, and Grace - sat on the front porch, eating pie and catching up. Dean and his dad had been on a hunt in Delaware when the letter arrived. Sam knew well enough to hide it under his mattress and pass it off to Dean when he got home. No reason to make John mad when they could avoid it. He was already fuming at Sam getting into Stanford. No need to start another fight.
That was how it usually went. Even when they were little, Grace would try to distract them. Well before she understood the true horror that coil be John Winchester, she could sense that there was something wrong. So she would insist that Dean be invited to her birthday parties too, even though Sam was the one in her classes. She would invite them both to family dinners, especially when she knew John was out of town and had left them without very much to live off of. When she got a little older, she'd always ask Sam if Dean could drive them and their friends places, just to get him out of the house. She always tried to include both of the brothers so they wouldn't have to be stuck with John. Sure, she and Dean got plenty of time to themselves now, but she'd try to make sure Sam and some of his friends were meeting up if they were going to be gone all day, or if they were headed out on a weekend hunt.
Of course it would occasionally backfire. John would invite her for dinner when he was home and pretend like everything was normal. When she started hunting with them, he would take her along until Dean was old enough to be sent off on his own. Then he would let her go with him. For all of the grief he gave Dean about her, he would say nothing when it was time for a hunt. It was safer if they went together, he'd say. But they did their best to take Sam too if they knew John was thinking about going hunting with his younger son.
As the sun started to set and Sam went inside to finish some homework, Grace and Dean went for a walk down the old dirt road that led to the secluded Winchester house. "Thanks again for all of this, Gracie," Dean said, taking her hand. "I couldn't have done this without you."
"You're welcome. Congrats again, Mr. Graduate."
Lebanon, KS - Present Day
"Pretty much the same," Eileen concluded.
"Pretty much the same."
"Do you ever think about getting out of hunting for good? I wanted to, but my family's been cursed, so it's kind of hard."
Grace nodded, absentmindedly twisting her wedding ring. "It seems like mine is too. I lost everyone to vamps after I went away to school, and just when I thought I'd sorted it all out, I hadn't. And then I came back here, and again, we were so close. We were literally on the threshold of being out, and then all of this happened, and here we are. I want to get out some day, but I honestly don't know if that's going to happen."
Cas stepped back into the room, followed by a burly man. "This is Sergei, he's a shaman."
"We've met," Grace frowned as she stood to shake his hand. "Belarus, 2005."
Sergei regarded her cooly, finally saying, "You got old."
"You got fat." Grace crossed her arms, making it clear that they weren't on the best of terms.
"Fair enough. I wish I could have helped you, but -"
"I got out. I managed to trick Baba Yaga on my own, or else I wouldn't be standing here. Now what can you do for Sam?"
Sergei looked him over, unpacking crystals and vials of mysterious liquids and explaining that, "He is dying. His soul is wounded. He is connected to something, something popular. Like a rubber band, it has been stretched too far and is trying to snap back into place, but it is impossible."
"Can you fix it?" Cas asked briskly.
He nodded. "It is possible."
As Sergei began working, Grace's phone rang. She was tempted to ignore it, but when she saw it was Dean, she ducked into the hallway. "Where are you?"
"Heyyy, Gracie."
She bristled at his voice, knowing he was still in the bar. "Dean, are you drunk?"
"Mmm, not too much. I'll be home in the morning. I picked up a case in Texas, and I've got a lead, but it's gonna take a bit. Missing person. I think I'm going to find a body, because that's what usually happens when a car goes missing, right?" She could hear him walking, a door closing behind him. The radio. He was in the car. As soon as he was alone, his tone shifted entirely. Dean was suddenly serious, telling her, "I'm hunting with Lee. You remember him, right? I'm hunting with him, but something's off. He's really trying to convince me not to go to the salvage yard looking for a car, but where else would you take a car if you wanted to get rid of it? I don't want to think he's in on this, but I've got to find out."
Grace breathed a sigh of relief. "You had me fooled there for a minute. Be careful, okay? He's a good guy, so if something got to him, well, it's got to be dangerous."
"How's Sam?"
"Cas has got a friend of his helping us. He called in a favor." She looked back to the infirmary, trying to make out what was going on. "This guy says Sam's going to be fine, but I'm worried. I've got faith in him, but I don't like him. Then again, we've worked with literal demons before. Just… get home as soon as you can, okay?"
"Of course. I love you, Gracie."
"I love you too." They hung up, Grace rejoining the rest of the group in the infirmary. Eileen raised an eyebrow as if to ask if everything was alright. Grace simply nodded, watching Sergei work.