"Why are you letting him hunt?" Henry was yelling again. He and Dean still yelled a lot, much to Sam's disappointment. But this time Sam was mad for an entirely different reason.

"You two don't get to decide what I do, I'm a grown man," Sam growled from his chair a few feet away from the argument. Dean ignored him.

"I have tried to keep him inside, but if I leave without him, he will just go out anyway!"

"I am right here," Sam said. He was still ignored.

"I could keep an eye on him," Henry said, trying to reason with Dean. "But you know he shouldn't be out in the state he is in. You could get him killed if you let him leave like this!" Sam groaned.

"You saying it would be my fault if he died?" Dean asked in acid tones.

"Obviously not!" Henry tried to backpedal, "I'm saying that you need to protect him and you aren't right now." Sam had to hand it to Henry, it was pretty clear how much he cared, but Dean wasn't having it.

"Look, I've tried to talk to him. I've explained all of this. But here's the thing: you don't know him." Dean pointed a hard finger at Henry's chest. "I do. And right now, he is going to just keep fighting until I let him leave this fucking bunker. Got it? Come on, Sammy." Henry looked like he was about to say more when Sam was suddenly right in front of him.

"I'm going, Henry," he said, words laced with iron. Henry exhaled roughly and looked down, defeated.

"Fine, do whatever the hell you want," he said, walking away sullenly. "Glad to see that you have about as much of a need for self-preservation as your brother, Sam." Dean was in the other room, and must have heard, but he didn't say anything. Sam had already had this fight with him. He glared at Henry for a few moments before he turned to leave.

"We'll call, Henry," he said, stopping in the doorway. "We'll both be fine." And with that he left, leaving Henry sitting alone at the huge table, head hung in defeat.

They did come back, as promised. They didn't talk about it much. It was something to do with an old friend named Krissy and revenge on some vampires. Henry wasn't talking to Dean, Dean wasn't talking to Henry. Sam just wanted everyone to stop treating him like a 5-year-old. When the brothers had said they were going to meet with their prophet friend, Kevin, again, Henry had stayed totally silent, not even moving until he heard the Impala drive away. After he knew they were gone, he picked up one of the huge volumes from the table and threw it across the room, knocking over a lamp. The bulb shattered loudly.

Hours later, the boys finally called. Henry understood the mechanics of a cell phone now. Not how it actually worked, but he got the most important bits. Hit the green button to answer the phone, hit the red to hang up and it didn't matter where you stood, you could talk to the person on the other end of the line. He hit the green button with force.

"Sam?" he answered. Dean never called him.

"Hey, Henry," Sam sounded wound up and worried. "Kevin, he uh, told us what the second trial is." Henry stood up from the table and started pacing.

"What?"

"Rescue an innocent soul from hell and release it unto heaven," Sam said. Henry heard the distinct sounds of the Impala in the background of the call.

"And you know how to do that?" Henry asked, running one hand through his hair nervously.

"Well, no," Sam answered honestly, "but we are going to find someone who does." He didn't elaborate, but he didn't have to. Henry stopped and slowly rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling. Were they really that stupid?

"A crossroads demon?" Henry asked, hoping he was wrong. The silence on the other end of the line sort of shot that hope in the ass. "You are going to summon a crossroads demon?"

"To be fair, we've both done it a few times before," Sam said. Henry just gripped the little phone more tightly to his palm.

"You have," he said. He hadn't known about this before. One of these days he was going to make both of them sit down and tell him everything. He constantly felt out of the loop.

"Yeah, we have." Sam said. The sounds of the Impala were cut off and Henry knew they were where they had been headed. "Look, we'll be fine, Henry. No big deal. We'll talk later." And with that, Sam hung up, leaving Henry talking into empty air.

"You better."

The boys didn't call. And didn't call. When Henry finally went through the steps that Dean had shown him to actually place a call, a voice at the other end informed him that the cell was not in an area of service. Eventually, Henry even called Dean, but he didn't answer either. The bunker went from an absolute mess, due to Henry's fits, throwing things around and generally being destructive, to spotless, as a result of Henry's need to be doing something, even if that something was cleaning. The next day, his phone lit up and light piano music started playing. Henry was surprised to see Dean's name on the small screen.

"Dean, where the hell have you been?" He demanded as soon as he had pressed down the green button.

"Henry, I'm sorry," Dean started. Henry shut his mouth. Dean never apologized.

"What happened?" he asked more softly now.

"Sam and I, we found a way to… get into hell, right?" Henry nodded, even though Dean couldn't see him. "Well, I was looking for Kevin and," Dean gulped loudly into the phone. Henry was trying not to be impatient.

"Dean, come on, what happened?" He urged.

"Naomi," Henry searched his mind for the name before he remembered the conversation that felt like it had been years ago. The one who had brainwashed Cas. Henry sat down heavily in a chair. This wasn't going to be good. "The bitch came and tried to get me on her side. But when I told her no, she finally told me exactly how Sam got himself into hell. He went through purgatory, Henry. Fucking purgatory." Henry suddenly understood just why Dean sounded so worried. Not only had he seen Naomi, but he had lost Sam somehow too?

"You let your brother go alone?" Henry demanded. He was starting to see red, though he knew he couldn't hurt Dean right now. They needed him up and working.

"He wouldn't let me go, Henry!" Dean shouted. He was sounding desperate. "And the guy who took Sam said he would only take one of us. We should have guessed, I mean, it is downright suicide to work with Winchesters."

"Well, this guy isn't dead yet. Calm down, Dean," Henry said, hand massaging his forehead.

"That's the thing, Henry," Dean took a ratcheted breath inwards, "he is dead. I just found him."

Sam was stuck in purgatory. Henry was stuck in the damn bunker. Dean was just stuck. It had taken a few minutes just for Henry to calm him back down, which was an impressive feat considering just how much Henry himself had been freaking out about the whole thing. That's why you shouldn't have let him go with you, he thought.

"It isn't your fault," was what he said. There is no way we are going to get him out, he thought. "You'll find a way, you always do," was what came out. The phone call had ended suddenly with a single word from Dean. A name.

"Benny!" And then he hung up. Henry did his best not to crush the phone in his hand as the line went dead. He tried to call Dean back but a woman on a recording informed him that the line was busy. He called his other cell, and his other, other cell, but Dean didn't pick up either one. The process of the bunker's destruction and then cleaning happened a second time. It wasn't until the next day that Dean and Sam came back, Sam struggling through the door with Dean's help. Henry waited until Sam was sitting down to reach forward, grab Dean's shoulder to spin him around, and punch him, hard, across the jaw.

"Ah, Henry, what the hell?" Dean asked, putting a hand up to his face. Henry was seething.

"You didn't. Fucking. Call." Henry spat. Sam's eyes widened. He had never heard Henry swear quite like that before. "I have been here for almost a full day waiting for you to get up off your ass and tell me you figured out how to save Sam. I thought you were both dead!" he moved forward like he was going to punch Dean again but Sam stood up and put a weak hand on him before he stumbled. The stumble took Henry a little out of his fury.

"Sammy?" Dean asked, rushing to Sam's side to hold him up. Sam tried to brush him off but just ended up stumbling again.

"Sam, what's wrong?" Henry asked. He stood in front of Sam, holding onto the boy's chin so he could see into his hazel green eyes. He looked to the other brother when Sam failed to answer. "Dean?"

"Second trial," Dean said. "It hurt him worse than the first one did." And with that, Sam finally passed out. Only Dean's strong arms prevented him from crashing down to the floor. "Let me get him to a bed and we'll talk. I swear." He added when he saw Henry's disbelieving face.

It took Dean much less time to get Sam down the hall and into a bed than it had taken Henry, but he was still breathing hard by the time he was done.

"Alright, sleep tight, sasquatch," he said as he left the room and closed the door. He steeled himself up to go talk to Henry and almost bolted when he remembered his promise. He needed to talk to Henry. He needed to.

Henry hadn't moved from his spot by the table and his shoulders were still hitched up in fury. Dean could practically see the smoke billowing from his ears like in an old cartoon. He almost found it funny, if Henry's face hadn't been so damned terrifying.

"Henry, I really am sorry," Dean started.

"Not good enough this time, Dean," Henry said. He had his arms crossed and he stood tall, looking into Dean's eyes without backing down. "You can't keep doing this to me. I agree that I can't leave this place yet. I understand that I am still healing, but you cannot keep me out of the loop."

"I know," Dean said. And he really did. He could see now just how much it hurt Henry to worry. "Henry, I haven't had any sort of, well, anyone worry about us in a long time. I'm not used to…" he trailed off.

"People who care about you?" Henry asked. He was calmer now.

"Well, yeah," Dean said, looking down to the floor. Henry tried to bite back the question, but he couldn't anymore.

"And did Castiel care about you?" he asked. Dean's head shot up, his eyes flecked with anger.

"Don't you dare talk about him," he said, voice gruff. "Don't you dare." Henry saw that this conversation just wasn't going to happen.

"Fine, then tell me how you got Sam out," Henry said. Dean shifted and shot Henry an annoyed glare.

"I called a friend," Dean said.

"Yeah, thanks, that clears everything right up." Henry rolled his eyes, "Is his name Benny?"

"That's the one," Dean said, "I met him in, well, Purgatory. He's a vampire. He helped me and—he helped me get out." Henry's eyebrows raised further and further at each part of the story.

"You met a vampire in purgatory, who is now out of purgatory, who knows you well enough that you called him up and he helped you get Sam out?" Henry asked incredulously.

"That's pretty much it," Dean said. "Only he didn't come back with Sam like he did with me. He stayed behind in that lovely part of Satan's ass-crack."

"So you are close enough to this vampire that he gave up his life here to save your brother? And I'm going to assume that Sam probably isn't fond of him in the first place." Dean's silence was more than enough to validate both statements. "Dean," he sighed, "I think you have always had people who cared about you. You just refuse to see it." He walked away, not waiting to hear Dean's answer.

Henry was in the store rooms when he heard the loud sound of glass shattering down the hall. He shot up to action, grabbing a sword off of the wall nearby and making his way silently down the hall until he burst into the main rooms, ready to fight. Sam jumped back, shocked.

"Whoa, Henry, what the fuck?" he asked. He didn't sound good at all. Henry looked around and noted the broken beer bottle on the floor a few feet behind Sam.

"I thought I heard… well, I heard that," he finally said, pointing at the bottle with his sword, which now felt pretty stupid in his hands. He put the thing down on a side table, embarrassed.

"Hey, Gramps here was totally going to take care of whatever monster had come in to kill you, Sammy," Dean grinned and laughed. He took a deep sip from his own bottle.

"Can we agree never to call me 'Gramps' again?" Henry asked, going into the other room for a broom and a rag to clean up the mess of beer.

"Yeah, Dean, that is really weird," Sam said, stumbling down to the table and sitting heavily in a chair. "After all, I'm fairly sure that we are both older than him." Henry stopped in the middle of his sweeping. He hadn't really thought about it, but now that he did, he was fairly certain Sam was right.

"Oh, yeah," Dean said, sounding like he had had the same mindset as Henry. "I know I am, but I didn't even think about it. Wonder how many people have a grandfather who is younger than them?" Henry didn't look at the boys. He just finished cleaning up the broken glass and returned a couple of minutes later to read a book. Sam had soup in front of him when he walked in and was arguing with Dean.

"Dean, I'm fine! I need to be out, hunting," Sam was shouting. He went to stand up and stumbled, almost falling over. Henry made a noise of frustration.

"Yeah, that's not going to happen," Dean said. At least they agreed on that, Henry thought. Eventually Dean just grabbed Sam's arm and ushered him down one of the hallways. "Come on, Henry." He called over his shoulder. When all of them were together in the gun range, Dean picked up the handgun, examined it, and fired two shots directly into the paper form on the opposite end of the range. He handed the gun to Sam.

"You hit that target, and we'll talk about you getting back out there," Dean said. Henry moved forward to say something but Dean put his hand up. He turned around to face Henry in a way that Sam couldn't see and gave him a small smile. Henry closed his mouth and watched Sam. It was obvious why Dean had made this a requirement. He couldn't even hold the gun up properly with one hand. He fired two shots and missed both times, by a large distance, hitting the wall instead.

"Ok, this second trial hit you a lot harder than the first one did, Sam," Dean said, taking the gun. "So just chill out and you can keep working on finding Kevin from here." Sam straightened up and glared at Dean for a minute before walking away angrily.

"Thank you, Dean," Henry said.

"Wasn't for you, Henry, but sure," Dean responded. Henry looked back at his eldest grandson and suddenly realized that even if Sam had made the shot, Dean wouldn't have let him out. He had underestimated Dean again.

"Hey, guys, I got a message from Charlie!" Sam yelled from the other room. Dean actually broke into a grin. He took off down the hallway, Henry close behind him.

"What did she say?"

"That's she's in the neighborhood, and she has a case for us," Sam said, looking confused. Dean felt the same way.

"How does she know she's in the neighborhood?"

"She tracked our location, but only within a few miles. She says we're off radar."

"So we can make calls in here without being tracked?" Dean asked. He looked around the room fondly, "Man, I love this bunker."

"I'm sorry, but who is Charlie?" Henry asked, coming forward to remind the boys he was in the room.

"Oh, Charlie's the best," Dean said, smiling more. He grabbed his coat off of a chair. "Come with us to meet her. She's going to love you," he added with a snort. Time-travelling Winchester in a secret underground bunker? Charlie was going to have a field day. "You're coming too, Sammy," Dean said. He gave Henry that look that didn't leave much room for argument, but after the events in the shooting range, Henry thought he trusted Dean much more in keeping Sam out of danger.

"Alright," Henry said, picking up his own new, leather jacket. "Let's go."

They were already down the road, Dean and Sam leaning against the car, Henry hanging back a bit, when Charlie's yellow car pulled into view. She was smiling somewhat nervously as she got out with her bag and moved forward.

"'Sup, bitches?" she said. The brothers smiled and Henry took that to mean that this was a fairly common way for Charlie to greet people. Sam and Dean each took a turn giving her a huge, warm hug, but Sam's left him coughing slightly, forcing him to lean back against the Impala.

"Whoa, Sam, are you ok?" Charlie asked, reaching for him.

"Fine," he answered, face plastered with a fake smile. She returned it uncertainly and suddenly realized there was another person by the car.

"And who is this?" She asked brightly, shooting Henry a wide smile, then turning to look at Dean.

"This is Henry," Dean said, "Henry Winchester." Charlie looked shocked, which was to be expected.

"What, like a distant relative?" She asked, looking at him.

"You could say that, I suppose," Henry responded, smile playing at the corners of his lips.

"Charlie, this is going to sound slightly nuts, but go with me here," Dean said, sucking in a breath. "Henry is our grandpa." He rolled the last word out with a strange lilt, like it wasn't a normal word to say. It didn't feel right on his tongue. Henry and Sam had been right, he was never calling Henry 'Grandpa', 'Gramps', or even 'Grandpappy' ever again.

"Your grandpa?" Charlie asked, looking at Henry like he would let her in on the joke.

"Yes," Henry said, "I am from Normal, Illinois. 1958." He pushed both of his hands into his pockets. He had never had this habit before, it had grown on him, or he had grown into it, since coming to 2013, but it just felt natural now. Especially when he was uncomfortable, which he was, with Charlie staring at him the way she was in disbelief.

"No way!" She finally squealed. "You guys have a time-travelling grandpa? This is, like, a level of science-fiction I really didn't think I would be able to live. Does this mean you guys got to have a 'teach Henry about technology' montage? Please tell me he gets all Captain America about cell phones and computers and stuff!" She was bubbling with excitement and Henry understood why Dean had laughed when he thought about how Charlie would react. It was actually pretty funny, even though he understood absolutely nothing that had come out of Charlie's mouth just now.

"Charlie," Sam interrupted with a smile, "maybe back down just a bit. I think you're scaring him."

"Oh!" She said, backing away and losing a bit of her smile. "Sorry, my bad. I just get really excited about time travel." Henry smiled at her.

"Not at all."

"Wait, so does this mean you can confirm what theory of time travel is true?" Charlie asked, facing Dean and Sam this time. "I mean, can we rule out Back to the Future hand-disappearing since you two seem to be here? Or, wait, he could have had your dad and then left. Oh, or are we talking Prisoner of Azkaban? A combination? Don't tell me this is going to get as confusing as the time travel in Lost did," Charlie let out a breath. Somehow Henry didn't think Charlie would mind if their situation was in fact as confusing as "Lost", whatever that was. Dean chuckled.

"This isn't exactly our first round with time travel, Charlie," Dean said. Henry was surprised, but Charlie looked less surprised than she really ought to.

"Well, you'll still have to tell me all about it so I have some really good arguments for my next time travel web debate," Charlie said. Again, Henry understood about two words out of her mouth.

"Will do. Now, Charlie," Dean said, coming forward to put an arm around her shoulders. "Let us introduce you to the Men of Letters."

Charlie's mouth had dropped open wider than Henry thought possible when she walked into the huge space that the three men called home. Dean showed it off like he had been the one to build the thing, but Henry enjoyed seeing the smile on his face. He wondered how the boys hadn't mentioned Charlie before, considering how obviously close they were. He was confused by the T-shirt she was wearing, but he had been confused about many of Dean's shirts initially as well. He thought that maybe Charlie was very similar to Dean, only she seemed much happier in general.

"I can't believe you guys have your own Batcave," Charlie said when they were all sitting down at the table and she was still looking around, admiring.

"Dean calls it that, too," Henry noted. Charlie grinned at him and Dean in turn.

"Oh, by the way," Charlie said, looking at both of the boys, "there is this series of books I found by Carver Edlund? Did those… actually happen?" Henry looked to see that Sam and Dean were both scowling.

"Books?" he asked.

"Yeah, they're called Supernatural," Charlie said to him. "Thanks for saving the world, by the way. And sorry you have zero luck with the ladies," she added with an apologetic glance at Sam.

"We need to find every copy of those books and burn them," Sam said, looking at Dean.

"Well, they're online now, so good luck with that," Charlie said. But Dean picked up something else.

"Did you say thanks for saving the world?" he asked, looking at Charlie intently.

"Uh, yeah? The apocalypse? Thanks for stopping that." This, Henry knew about. Sort of. He knew his grandsons had stopped the end of the world and was unbelievably proud, but did this mean that there were actual books he could read about the events?

"I thought they only went to me going to hell," Dean said, looking at Sam. Sam's eyes widened.

"He kept writing?"

"YOU WENT TO HELL?" Henry demanded. Dean winced and looked at him.

"Oh, yeah. We have sort of… both been." Dean said. He looked severely uncomfortable with the path the conversation was taking.

"So, Charlie," Sam said, trying to redirect the conversation, "you said you had a case for us?"

They were in the gun range for the second time that day. This time it was both Henry and Sam who held back while Dean and Charlie stood by the concrete window.

"Ok, now if you can hit that target, then—" he was cut off by Charlie firing two precise shots into the head of the paper target at the end of the range. Henry's eyes widened and Sam shifted in annoyance. Charlie handed the gun back to Dean with no small amount of pride. Dean sighed.

"Alright, but if you are going to do a ride-along, it is time to lose the novelty T-shirts," he said, shoving the gun into the back of his pants and leaving the room.

"Does this mean we get to do a makeover montage?" Charlie asked, smiling her way past Henry and Sam as she followed Dean. Out in the hallway, Henry stopped her. He looked back and forth to make sure both Sam and Dean were out of earshot.

"Those books you mentioned," he began. Charlie's eyebrow quirked up. "How do I find them?"