Stronger Than Ever Δ SPN [3]

039. APOCALYPSE WORLD

The hunters are backing to go to Apocalypse World while Rowena makes sure they have everything for the spell.

Rowena pulls a hair out of Dean's head.

"Ow." He protests.

"Something from the other side." Rowena puts his hair into the bowl.

"Hey. How's Gabriel?" Sam asks Cas when he walks in.

"He said he needed a minute alone. He wanted to extract his grace by himself. "In private" So I left him alone in Dean's room." Cas explains.

"You what? No." Dean complains as the three teenagers giggle.

"I have to interrupt, but I can't be the only one to notice the rather glaring hole in our plan." Rowena says. "We open up the rift, it gives us a day to find and save your mom and the boy. And it's a very big world over there and you're not even sure where they are, so..."

"She's right. The clock may run out on us." Cas says.

"Yeah. It might." Sam agrees.

"Yeah, well, we don't have any better ideas." Dean says.

"Mm, that's inspirational." Rowena remarks.

"Here it is!" Gabriel walks in. "The final ingredient -- a fresh serving of archangel grace." He puts a vial on the table. Rowena picks it up, the group looking at the small amount of grace in there that doesn't even fill up half of the vial.

"This is what you call a serving?" Rowena asks.

"For what? A mouse?" Libby asks.

"That is the jet fuel of divine emissions. It'll be more than enough to get the job done." Gabriel says.

"I'm sure." Ophelia sarcastically agrees.

~ ~ ~

Rowena prepares the spell, everybody getting ready to go through the rift when she opens it. She says the spell and the rift appears.

"Okay, everyone ready?" Cas asks.

"Yeah, all right." Sam says.

"Let's do this." Dean says.

They move towards the rift, but stop when it flickers. It slowly starts to fall sideways, everybody's heads falling with it until it completely disappears.

"Okay." Dean mutters.

"Well, that was... fast." Cas says.

"Very, very fast." Sam says.

"One could even say premature." Rowena comments.

"More than enough, huh?" Ophelia turns to Gabriel with an eyebrow raised.

"Um... I thought it would be enough." Gabriel defends.

"All right, great. What do we do now?" Sam asks.

"The hell if I know." Cas says.

"You do know. We all do." Cas says.

"We do?" Nathan asks.

"We need archangel grace. Gabriel's obviously running a little low and we don't know how long it'll take him to recover. So that leaves exactly one source on earth."

"No." Sam objects, shaking his head. Libby looks over at him, seeing the horrified look in his eyes, breaking her heart.

"I don't like it either, but there is no other way." Cas says. "We need Lucifer."

~ ~ ~

The five hunters and Cas are in the kitchen, discussing getting Lucifer in on the plan. Dean is leaning against the counter, Ophelia and Nathan are sitting at the table, Cas is leaning against the table, and Sam is sitting on the steps of the entryway closest to the library with Libby next to him and she's hugging his arm, resting her head against his bicep in silent comfort.