#angelsencyclopedia

painreception.

“grace — grace?”

erin stands behind her, now, a tremble in her voice. it could be passed as such from the cold, or the fatigue, but she knows it’s from the question on her tongue.

grace had saved her. grace had found her when she was tied up, when she was unable to even call for help. but … maybe she knew where to find erin because she had put her there in the first place. erin doesn’t know what to think anymore.

“we, um, someone found dean winchester. he’s dead. your — your room key was on him.”

angelsencyclopedia.

Grace looks up at the sound of her name, her stomach dropping at the tremor in Erin’s voice. Had something else happened? It wasn’t unlikely, with the fiasco of the last 5 days, but still, it was unusual for someone to seek her out directly.

Her stomach dropped farther. Dean Winchester– the first disappearance.

She’d been out late that night. There had been a group dinner and everyone had had more than a little to drink. She’d lost her room key earlier in the day, and never quite found it either. 

She encountered Dean Winchester on her way back to the hotel.

“Dean? I thought he left the island?” she put on a calm, confused demeanor and faced her old friend. “I guess that explains where my room key went though.”

painreception.

erin breathes out a sigh. it can’t be grace. she’s as clueless as the bride herself. running a hand through her hair — a stress habit she doesn’t recall actually starting, but it’s the least of her worries at this moment — she looks to the ground and then back up at grace, fingers moving to the hem of her shirt to fiddle as she replies hesitantly.

“yes, we — we all did. but, uh, it doesn’t … grace, you’re a suspect. you must have seen him last, after all, and — if you — i can’t believe i’m saying this, but if you didn’t kill him, why did you see him?”

angelsencyclopedia.

Grace watches and listens quietly. Erin is visibly distressed- and why wouldn’t she be? she’s confronting someone on the topic of murder- and Grace can’t help but feel tense. She’d have to choose her words carefully here. She clears her throat and speaks slowly.

“I was walking back from the restaurant, alone… I was a little buzzed, I’ll admit to that, and Dean was standing on the beach. I couldn’t see well, it was dark, but he seemed to have been standing there longer than if he had just left dinner..,” she paused and tried to gather her thoughts on the fly. “I didn’t end up staying in my room that night–”

Realizing how that might sound, Grace backtracked, speaking a little faster. “B-Because the machines were broken! I couldn’t get another key to my room so I had to stay out and…” She trailed off and watched Erin, trying to gauge her reactions. “I don’t know how he got my key.”

painreception.

every stutter, every hitch in her breath, every GLANCE reads that grace is hiding something. erin does not have to be a genius, nor a detective, to figure that out, and with a nature as blunt as it always has been, she confronts grace with more confidence now.

“you’re hiding something, grace. you don’t — what are you hiding? we are in the middle of a horror movie, here, stranded on a powerless island with someone ready to kill us all, it would seem! keeping secrets right now isn’t … it’s not wise, grace.”

her voice softens at the end, but her eyes remain staring, as defiant as she can muster at a time when she would rather give in to fear. “tell me what you know. please.”

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Grace knows she isn’t handling this as well as she should be. If she’d knownthat Erin was going to be meeting with her, then she’d be considerably more composed– more normal. She’d been caught off guard by this line of questioning and it wasn’t her fault…

It wasn’t supposed to BE this way. 

The brunette doesn’t meet her friend’s eyes, listening to her accusations and taking all of them. She deserves all of them, doesn’t she? 

Her voice is barely above a whisper as she meets Erin’s gaze, eyes soft, vulnerable, but there’s a cold hint of ice just beyond the surface, like it has ALWAYS been. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Erin.”

painreception.

there is a shift in the atmosphere, and not for the first time, erin is afraid. as grace’s eyes raise to meet her gaze, she can do nothing but stare back, eyebrows pulling together in confusion at her friend’s words. she swallows, looking at grace searchingly. 

“supposed to be … what way, grace?”

angelsencyclopedia.

She’s frustrated, that’s what she is. Her own words repeat in her head and more than anything she is frustrated. Hysteria that had started to set in from the beginning of this conversation was finally starting to come through and to her own surprise her voice shakes only slightly.

“The wedding, the people, the deaths… After everything that happened in high school I thought that all of this drama was over and now you think I killed someone? Th-There’s no way that I could’ve strangled Dean like that Erin!”

painreception.

she’s right. of course she’s right, it was stupid of erin to even ASK. grace couldn’t kill someone; grace wouldn’t kill someone. erin opens her mouth to apologize, lips parted and eyes sorrowful, and she pauses.

“grace,” she begins, and it’s calmer, quieter, “how did you know dean was strangled?”

angelsencyclopedia.

She’s blown it now, and she curses herself for it over and over in her head. There is no recovering from this, and the realization of it snaps something inside the small woman. There’s no need to hold back now. 

“Where did they find him?” Grace half grins. 

painreception.

something changes in grace after erin speaks, and the young bride is only given a moment to watch her warily before grace replies. there is nothing hidden now. erin swallows again, taking a step back — more of a shuffle, really — and clearing her throat in vain.

“in — in the — in the woods, grace, he’d been there for days.” a pause hangs over them. “… what have you done?”

angelsencyclopedia.

Grace knows what she’s done. If she’s honest, most of the people that have died here are people she didn’t know. People she barely remembers the names of. 

She doesn’t remember how many have died, only that Dean was one of the first.

“I did it because of you, you know. The power going out has been lucky, but the killings were because of you.”

painreception.

erin’s breath hitches. for a moment, she simply stares at grace, dumbfounded at this confession — and terrified by what she means. her eyes glance to distant friends, companions, strangers; the wedding party is too far away to hear their conversation. she could call out to them, but she’s scared to make a sound. 

“i — what do you mean, because of me?”

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“This trip was supposed to be different,” Grace grits her teeth, already losing herself to the rage she hadn’t fully realized had built up over the course of the week.

“In school– Erin, you were my ONLY friend,” the anger manifests itself in the welling up of tears in her eyes and she clenches her fists. “Everyone ignored quiet little Grace with the druggie big brother. I thought things were gonna bedifferent… Then you forgot about me too and then this wedding and the people who hadn’t even bothered to say hello–”

“Erin I hated you.”

painreception.

erin freezes, breath caught sharply in the shock of her friend’s revelation. each of these deaths, every time they have been forced to mourn someone who died far too young … it was her fault. all of it. archelaos’ death. 

“you killed these people because you were mad at me?” perhaps the jagged edge to her voice is from the desperate urge to be violently sick, crawling up her throat, but she doesn’t. tears cloud her vision, thick and fast, but this conversation is over.

she turns towards the rest of the party, now, to get away from grace — to tell them the name of their killer — to find somewhere to cry.

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“I’m mad because the world is not a fair place,” She says softly, knowing that Erin isn’t listening anymore.

Grace watches her go, and accepts her fate. She has been caught. Two days remain before this vacation is over, and who knows how long they’ll be forced to stay afterward.

angelsencyclopedia

Dean no longer kept track of time; whenever he thought to stop and count, he felt dread bubble up inside his throat. So instead he drifted from day to night like a wondering ghost, longing for life again. Yet regardless of how long it had been, it felt like an eternity to be wandering the earth alone.

The demon hadn’t lost his Grace, he had let her go. He remembered the last kiss they had shared, one that whispered a goodbye and prayed it wouldn’t be forever. Heaven had open it’s doors and angels surged in and out again. It was no longer safe for Dean to be with the angel, so with much pain, they had detached themselves from one another.

The demon hybrid had a few close calls, running into Grace’s brother and sisters. It was strange, to know so much about such terrifyingly beautiful creatures such as angels and yet never truly see the brutality they could inflict on their enemies. He was well aware of it now.

This cold winter’s night was one of those lethal encounters. Dean knew he was being stalked, he could sense the angel’s grace from miles away. He had done his best to cover his tracks, leaving traps in his wake, but he couldn’t shake whomever was following him. Grace had done such a great job of shielding his dark aura from angels left on Earth, but with Heaven open, heavenly power rained down on them like a thousand storms.

But it seemed no matter how careful, how quick he was, the angel grew closer and closer. Finally Dean spun on his heels, blade drawn, eyes black as pitch, and bellowed, “Alright, come out and fight. I don’t fear death.”

It felt like the island was spiraling downward into chaos, or, at least, the wedding party’s side of it was.

People had left, gone missing, turned up dead. And now Erin.

Everyone had gone out searching, repacked their hardly unpacked bags. The letter was passed between all hands. It was like they been sent into their own personal horror movie.

No one noticed when Grace left her search group, just like hardly anyone had even noticed she was there to begin with. A bitter taste filled her mouth when she herself disappeared, but the attention stayed on Erin. It was familiar, but easy to ignore. It tasted like high school all over again.

She couldn’t help but shake her head at her thoughts—they were looking for Erin, this wasn’t about her!– but it was an old wound. And being back here, with old friends and old memories, had peeled back scabs that were long forgotten as scars.

Her search brought her to the source of the island’s recent drama; the beach.

The sand was soft, barely disturbed in the events of the last few days, smoothed by the steady tide, and Grace found herself following a trail of footprints. They lead like a pathway through the winding, craggy expanse of caves that wrapped around the island, and the way grew darker and darker as time passed and the trees grew denser.

After a while, the trail tapered off, but it wasn’t hard to guess where they led. Through the trees and back towards the beach, a massive, dark silhouette loomed. As she grew closer, the shape materialized into a rotted, stinking ship, half sunken and washed up onto the rocks.

The hull was cracked into pieces, a massive gaping hole in the front yawned at her from the treeline, and carefully, she climbed inside, covering her face from the smell of decaying wood and fish.

Before long, she’d made the discovery that everyone had been desperate to make themselves.

Hands closed gently around the bride’s blindfold and untied it, the makeshift gag and sturdy ropes soon following, and Erin slumped into Grace’s arms— the result of a day spent alone in the heat and confines of a cave.

There weren’t many words to be said, so she didn’t use them. The girl’s arm slipped around Erin’s waist, lifting up her hardly-conscious friend, and she toted her back to the mainland, towards the hotel. Back to safety.

That is, if this island was even considered safe anymore.

Modnote;

unrequited love and heartbreak

    they’re sat in a diner. it’s busy, frantic. the buzz of day-to-day    life streams past the couple in the booth --- they’ve got time,    they’re in no hurry. the conversation was rather normal. the    placement of expression was normal. the confession was not.

    dean looks at grace, startled, his gaze flicking between her     eyes as they hold steady in return. then his own eyes flicker    down to his half-empty plate, a brief and bitter chuckle rising    in his throat. he smiles down at the table, but the smile is cold    and false. perhaps he’s struggling to breathe, or perhaps he    simply needs to remember how.

            ‘ no, you don’t. ’

A few hours into the drive, the young man spotted a woman hitchhiking down the side of the road. He knew he probably shouldn’t stop for hitchhikers, but she looked relatively harmless and it was better he picked her up than some maniac or ax murderer. 

“Hop in; I’ll give you a lift. Where are you headed?”  

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