Metatron took my grace.
Angels. They're falling.
Miss me?
Metatron, you're mortal now.
Aah! How do we get rid of the Mark?
I-i don't know. What about the tablets?
No, there's nothing in them about the Mark.
Shoot him.
No, no! No. your grace.
I'll take you to it.
Anything about the Mark?
Yeah, I found this "Book of the Damned."
I'll go check it out.
Charlie, thank you.
Arrivederci, bitches.
Rowena?
Not possible.
The Mark of Cain never lets its host die easy.
What the hell are you doing here?
Saving my son.
Mother says that Mark is just a curse,
can be removed.
I'm good, thanks.
I don't buy that the Mark is a terminal diagnosis.
There has to be a way, and we will find it.
Okay.
Who the hell are you?
And why are you following me?
I ain't following you.
I'm following what you got in your bag there.
That don't belong to you, girl.
Belongs to my family.
Yeah? Well, sorry, Gambit.
Finders keepers.
It's beyond your understanding.
Hell, you can't even read it.
Are you always so condescending
when someone's pointing a blade at you?
Now, you look here.
You can cut me down, but my people will never stop.
And you can tiptoe through the tulips
like you did in Russia,
or you can stow away
on the back of a train like you did in Alaska,
but soon enough, my kin will find you.
This ends with you being dead.
Aah!
You can't run forever, little girl!
== sync, corrected by elderman == @elder_man
Our flashback playback continues
with a song that climbed
all the way to number four on the charts.
Here's Alanis Morissette's "Ironic."
Really?
That song is a classic.
Yeah, I hear you. I do.
And you're right.
Inclement weather on the day of your nuptials
and the wrong cutlery at inopportune times
is hardly ironic.
But it sure is catchy.
Yeah, fair point. Can't argue taste.
But since I became human,
it's just so... strange.
All these feelings, you know?
I mean, I can feel music.
Like that last song, "Sussudio,"
I don't even know what it's about and I love it.
I always enjoyed lyrics, words, stories.
Gives me goose bumps.
And goose bumps ...
don't even get me started on those.
Creepy.
And yet... arousing.
Cass.
Can I just kill him now?
You know I can hear you, right?
No, we need him alive. For now.
Look, after he gives you your Grace back,
you can do whatever you want with him.
Well, I'd like to kill him slowly.
I am like two feet from you.
Anything on the Mark of Cain?
Every word ... crystal clear.
No.
I mean, I've been digging for something, for anything, but...
I don't know, Cass.
There is an answer out there.
We will find a cure for Dean.
I don't know why you'd want to cure
that little firecracker now.
He's finally interest... Ooh!
Well, just keep digging.
Yeah, uh, no one here by that name. Sorry.
Sam?
Lose reception?
Or did he hang up on you?
He hung up on you, didn't he?
Oh!
So, I've been checking through everything again,
double-checking, and triple-checking, and...
The Mark is a curse.
Yeah, tell me about it.
No, Sam, it's a...
it's an actual curse.
What are you talking about?
Crowley told me.
Or rather Rowena told him
after she tried and failed to kill me.
What the hell happened?
The Mark protected me.
Rowena doesn't really have a beef with me.
She was pissed at Crowley
because she thinks he's going soft.
She's not wrong. Yeah, well,
after he and mommy dearest got into a fight ...
Mommy dearest?
Rowena is Crowley's mother.
More about that later.
So...
then he came and told me what she had said.
The Mark is an actual curse.
So, anyway, I'm sorry.
I probably should've told you that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
Winchester accounting. How may I help you?
Dean. Charlie?
What's going on? Where are you?
Uh, uh, I'm exhausted and ... and I'm bleeding.
And I'm in a phone booth. A phone booth.
I didn't know these things existed
outside of "Bill and Ted's" ...
Okay, hey, hey. Take a deep breath, kiddo.
Uh, we're both sitting here.
Tell me what happened. Why are you bleeding?
I, uh ... I got shot.
Did you know dental floss works great on stitches?
I only passed out twice,
and I'm pretty sure my wound is now minty fresh.
Charlie, you probably need to go to a hospital.
No, no, I-I'm fine.
I just got to get someplace safe.
These guys are still after me.
What guys? Who?
Some southern-fried D-bags.
They've been after me since I-I dug up
"The Book of the Damned."
You found it? Where?
After some near misses and some broken-into museums,
I found historical documents
that led to a monastery in Spain.
It burned down years ago, left for dead,
but, uh, I had this hunch about it.
Turned out I was right.
Okay, Charlie, what does it say about the Mark?
I have no fracking idea.
The language it's written in,
I've never seen anything like it.
I, uh ... I found some research notes
in the monastery crypt, though, by the friar that buried it.
"The Book of the Damned" is a spell book
for creating or undoing
any kind of damnation there is.
We translate this thing,
I think we can get the Mark of Cain off you, Dean.
Charlie, you're a genius.
A genius fugitive.
I ... these dudes following me, they are well-trained.
One of them keeps talking about his family.
Family? Did you get a name?
No clue.
I-I-I spotted a tattoo on one of them.
Might be a family crest. It seemed occulty.
Soon as the book was out of the ground,
they were all over me.
I, uh...
I don't know how much more running I got left in me.
T-they're tracking the book somehow.
All right, then we need to get you off the grid, Charlie.
Where are you right now?
Uh, just south of Des Moines.
Uh, okay, you know what?
Our ... our friend Bobby has a whole bunch of cabins
scattered all around, places for hunters to crash.
You know, it's not much,
but there's some gear and lore books,
stuff to keep you busy till we get there. Okay, bring snacks.
And every Men of Letters decoder ring there is.
This book is old and scary,
and I've never seen anything like it.
Hey, check it out.
I found this in the storage room.
It's lead-lined and warded.
If those guys are tracking this book,
pretty sure this bad boy will take it off the radar.
You ready?
What?
Nothing.
I just haven't seen you like this in a while, that's all.
It's a good song, man. Shut up. Yeah, it's ...
Look, man, it has been one crap sandwich after another
for the past few weeks, okay?
You heard Charlie.
We got a shot at fixing this thing,
so if that don't put gas in your tank, well...
If by "shot," you mean a spell in a book that we can't read
that's currently being tracked ...
We're due for a win, okay?
Overdue.
I'll tell you another thing, if this actually does work,
we're gonna take some time off.
What, like a vacation?
Mm-hmm.
And I'm not talking just like a weekend in Vegas
or sitting in some crap motel watching pay-per-porn.
No, I'm talking about a beach.
Drinking Cervezas, go for a swim,
mingle with the local wildlife.
When was the last time either one of us was on a beach?
Never.
Sand between our toes, Sammy.
Sand between our toes.
Mmm!
O... M... Me.
Oh.
Food.
Glorious food.
Mmm.
All the countless descriptions in so many books,
but those are just words.
Oh.
The taste, the ... the actual taste...
I had no idea.
Oh.
And the process ...
goes in here...
comes out here.
Sorcery.
I mean, you used to be human.
Don't you miss all this?
No. I don't miss digestion.
I don't miss indigestion.
No, no, no. Not that.
I mean, don't you miss the feeling of all of this?
Like the taste of these waffles.
The sound of a child's laughter.
Look at us.
We're a couple of angels who've touched
not only the divine, but the mundane.
You and I have a lot in common.
Don't.
What?
I thought we were having a moment.
Can't we be besties?
No.
Because you killed my friend.
Oh, pbht. Dean is fine, mostly.
Can't you get past that?
Never.
Now, we've hit three of your so-called safe houses,
and all of them are empty.
So either you've lost my Grace or you're stalling.
Can you blame me?
The minute I hand over your Grace, I'm dead.
You have made your bed, Metatron,
and nothing is going to get you out of it.
What are you doing?
I think I need to use the little boys' room.
Little help.
Quick. Oh.
Charlie?
Merry Christmas!
Hey.
Were you followed?
No, no.
How you feeling?
Um...
I may have just passed out, but better.
Where's the book?
Okay, here's what I've learned so far.
About 700 years ago, a nun locked herself away
after having "Visions of Darkness."
After a few decades squirrelled away by herself,
she emerged with this.
Each page is made out of slices of her own skin
written in her blood.
I told you, it's eekish.
According to the notes I found,
it's been owned and used by cults, covens,
and the Vatican had it for a while.
There's a spell inside that thing for everything.
Talking some black mass, dark magic,
end-of-times nastiness.
As far as what language it's written in,
I'm thinking it's some kind of, uh...
Dean? Dean!
What?
I don't think it's a good idea that I touch this.
I'll go get the rest of our crap.
Right.
What the hell was that?
He's not getting better.
He's trying to cover, but...
We need to find that cure, fast.
Sorry about the mess.
I guess I'm lactose intolerant.
Let's never speak of it again.
Metatron and Castiel.
This really must be my lucky day.
Two birds, one blade.
Who are you?
Oh, just a cupid.
Just an angry, angry cupid.
I understand you're upset.
You both corrupted heaven.
It's never gonna be the same!
Aaaaah!
I owed you that one, anyway.
This changes nothing.
You're welcome.
Okay, I got a pretty good look at his tattoo.
It's something like this.
The douche clan. Got it.
Well, this is everything Men of Letters had on occult families,
so there should be something in here.
Sam, got anything?
Maybe.
Uh, yeah, it's all in an obscure Sumerian dialect.
Actually found a rough match for it in this book.
Great.
I thought so, too.
But I've been translating,
but none of the translated words make any sense.
It's all just gibberish.
I mean, maybe it's in a different dialect?
No, no, no.
You're right, but I-I-I think...
I think this is in code.
An entire book of unreadable text
that's also in code.
Great.
And you call yourselves nerds.
Come on. You got this.
He's right.
You know what, Charlie?
Why, uh...
Um, why don't we stick with my notes for a little bit?
This book is literally making my eyes hurt.
What is it?
Shh.
Damn it.
She found a way to hide the book.
It was here.
It was on this road.
She was on this road.
Send the boys up and down the way,
see if anybody saw her.
Oh, come on.
You expect me to believe that you hid my Grace in a library?
Nobody goes to libraries anymore.
It's the safest place in the world.
I can feel my Grace.
It's here, but you've hidden it somehow.
Where is it?
Honestly, I have no idea.
Aa aah! Aah!
Where is it?
Oh! Gah!
I don't know, I swear!
I had another angel hide it, even from me!
You know, in case someone
tries to torture the information out of me!
Case in point!
Where is my Grace?
I told the angel to hide some clues
in some of my favorite books.
Mother, may I?
"What is the maddest thing a man can do?"
It's a riddle? What ... what's the answer?
Beats me. I've only been a man a day.
Um, the ... the answer to the riddle
will lead to another book.
And inside that book, you'll find your Grace.
We're gonna work this out together, okay?
Teamwork.
Okay, even the Bletchley Circle couldn't crack this thing.
I've tried every cryptographic algorithm there is.
Goose egg.
Well, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Those people following you...
Hmm? All kinds of wrong.
Talking multi-generational, centuries-old wrong.
The Styne family.
Men of Letters' files have them dated back to the early 1800s.
They used spells to create disease,
to destabilize markets.
Hell, they even helped the Nazis
before they came into power,
and they profited from all of it.
So, they're like the supernatural Du Ponts?
Basically.
All the spells they used
came from a book of "Unspeakable Evil,"
which they lost nearly 100 years ago.
Okay, so they're bad. So what?
We faced worse.
Sam, read the file.
The way the book works
is when you use it, there is a negative reaction.
I'm talking biblical negative.
Dark magic always comes with a price.
We know that.
We've been down that road before.
Well, let's at least translate it, see what it says.
You guys don't understand.
The book's been calling out to me
ever since I laid eyes on it, okay?
Calling out to the Mark. I can hear it like it's alive.
It wants me to use it, but not for good.?
Look, I wanted it to be the answer, too, okay?
I really did.
But we have got to get rid of that.
Burn it, bury it, I don't give a damn.
We'll just have to find another way to fix the Mark.
Like what?
I don't know.
So, you're giving up?
No, I'm not giving up.
Charlie, I don't have a death wish.
Okay, even if I did, I can't die,
not with this thing on my arm.
What I can do is I can fight it as long as I can until...
Until what?
Tell me.
Until what, Dean?
Until I watch you become a demon again?
Until then?
I can't do that.
I won't do that.
Well, then you'll just have to lock me up.
Bind me to the bunker like you did last time.
That doesn't solve anything.
Look, just let us translate the book, okay?
If there's a cure, we'll do it
and deal with the consequences later.
I can't lose you.
Really?
Yeah, really.
You change your mind on that,
'cause that's not what you said last time.
Oh, come on, man. You know I didn't mean that.
This is my cross to bear, Sam.
Mine.
And that book is not the answer.
Now, we got to destroy it
before it falls into the wrong hands,
and that includes me.
I'm gonna go for a drive.
Uh, Charlie, we forgot to pick up your snacks.
Dean, look ... We'll figure out another way.
And, Sam, I'll get my vacation.
But not today. Not like this.
Sam.
Maybe he's right.
No.
No, there's a way to fix it. There has to be.
You know, we really do make a good team.
Kind of like a buddy comedy without the comedy.
Or the buddies.
Oh, now, come on.
Back at the diner,
that was some pretty awesome dynamic-duo action.
What we did back there was unfortunate.
No more of our brothers and sisters should die.
Brothers and sisters?
Listen to you.
Still spitting out the company line
like anyone cares.
Like we're actually a family?
When what we really are are a bunch of glowing lights
filled with self-loathing or delusions of grandeur.
Or both. You shut up.
No!
If I'm gonna die, I want answers.
Like, who are you now?
Like, you're obviously not an angel of the lord.
And what about all of this
"walking the earth like Kane from 'Kung Fu'" crap?
Cleaning up heaven's messes.
How many more rogue angels are there out there?
And what are you gonna do once you're done with all that?
Go back to heaven? Please.
The angel formerly known as Hannah
has restored order up top.
Smoothest it's run
since God cut the ribbon on the pearly gates.
So tell me, Castiel, truly,
what is your mission now?
You shut up and keep looking.
Well...
cannot say...
I didn't try.
Poor Castiel.
Swam so far just to drown in shallow waters.
Isn't it ironic?
Don't ya think?
What did Dean mean?
When he said you changed your mind?
So, a while back, we had a chance to, um...
Close the gates of hell.
And in order to do that,
I would've had to die,
and I was okay with that and I am okay with that,
but Dean was not.
And so he, uh...
He saved you.
Yeah, he saved me.
And let me guess,
in doing so, he did something you didn't want
and that pissed you off.
And you said something that hurt him?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Brothers.
You know, I haven't been a hunter for very long,
but it feels like this is the life.
Mostly ends in Sophie's choices, death, or tears.
Usually all of the above, huh?
How did this become my life?
I mean, I was gonna own my own start-up, marry ScarJo,
invent something cool.
Now I'm just...
I'm just happy to be alive.
You know, when Dean came to get me at school,
I-I told myself...
One last job, you know?
One more job.
And then when ... when I, um...
When I lost Jess,
I, again, told myself, one more job.
There's always one more job, you know?
And one more job and one more job,
and then I was gonna go back to law and ... and to my life.
You were the dread pirate Roberts
of hunting.
Yeah.
I guess I really understand now that...
This is my life.
I love it.
But I can't do it without my brother.
I don't want to do it without my brother.
And if he's gone, then I don't...
I-I got it. I do.
All right, first things first ...
find what I really came here for.
"What two things do you need to succeed in life?"
Ignorance and confidence.
They're quotes.
So, uh...
did you and samateur hour really think
I wouldn't have a backup plan?
Ah.
Hello, demon tablet.
The places I'll go with this.
And your Grace.
Well, one out of two ain't bad.
What's the maddest thing a man can do?
Let himself die.
God just don't build to last, does he?
Afternoon, sir.
Howdy.
There we go.
That'll be it for you?
Uh, yeah, that's it.
Okay, then. That'll be $15.75.
You heading home, or you just passing through?
Just passing through.
Must get awful lonely out here all by yourself.
Oh, I get by.
Don't move.
Hands where I can see them.
Don't you want your change?
Now...
Who might you be?
Well, hello, there.
Where'd a back-road nothing like you
get their hands on something like that?
What's it to you, Mr. Styne?
My friends call me Jacob.
Well, I ain't your friend.
Mm.
These wouldn't happen to be treats
for a redheaded little gal, now, would they?
Y'all hid the book, didn't you?
Lead-lined little number, I'm betting.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
You don't?
See that?
That man back there,
well, he said the same thing as all the others
at truck stops and gas stations up and down the way.
Nobody had seen that redheaded girl.
And then a man bearing that Mark comes in here, to me.
Well, there's coincidence,
and then there's just Providence.
See, "The Book of the Damned," it wants to be found.
It wants to come home.
Let me guess.
You want to use it
to get that gift off your arm, don't you?
Power is wasted on the weak.
Now, the book...
can remove that Mark.
But you mess around with that,
you're gonna do far more harm than good.
So, why don't you do the right thing here, boy,
and tell me where that book is?
Yeah, sure, I'll tell you.
One more time. I didn't hear you.
I said...
What's going on?
The Stynes, they found me.
Those douches are all jacked up, too. What are you talking about?
I emptied a full clip into one of them before the son of a bitch went down.
Dean, what are you doing with the holy oil?
There is a cure for the Mark in the book.
But it comes at a price.
We got to destroy it.
Are you sure about this?
It's calling to me, Sam, okay?
I can hear it. It's calling to the Mark.
It wants me to take the book and run away with it.
Burn it, now.
Sam, burn it now.
You silly boy.
I was foolish, selfish.
Should've just killed him.
Who knows what he'll do with that tablet?
Well, you know what, Cass?
You got your Grace back. You're back.
You did the right thing.
That book needed to be destroyed.
We will find another way, Sam.
We're back, bitches.
Whoa.
Is that who I think it is?
Charlie, Cass.
Cass, Charlie.
I thought you'd be shorter.
I'm gonna get these to the fridge.
Heard you got your mojo back.
Yes, my ... my Grace, it's ... it's been restored.
So, can't you just, you know...
cure Dean?
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
Oh.
Never is, is it?
Do you think you could do anything
about my carpal tunnel?
Is that it?
Your carpal tunnel and your bullet wound
are now healed.
You may want to continue wearing your wrist brace at night, though.
Did we just become best friends?
Hey, look who decided to show.
So? You're back?
100%?
How did that happen?
Um, it was Hannah.
She managed to get the location of the remainder of my Grace
out of Metatron.
Awesome.
I told you we were due for a win.
Good to have you back, pal.
Sam, burn it now.
My family will never stop looking for that book.
I need the Mark of Cain off of my brother.
And something tells me...
you can crack this book
and find that cure.
Shall we discuss terms?
== sync, corrected by elderman == @elder_man