Abigail had spent a great deal of time searching for that one place to watch it all happen, to see it all go down. Not the world's end, no.

No, she knew full well that she and the others had fallen far short of their goal. That what had happened, what was always going to happen, of course. It was inevitable, really. And so, while the rest of the world made jokes about Mayans and the apocalypse, she wondered where she should go.

Vatican City? No. It wasn't as if it were any more holy than a brothel these days. In fact, a brothel had more true endearments made to God, of that she was sure.

A mosque might have been nice, except it had been a very long time since she'd been in one and travel to the Middle East was dangerous-- Actually, the thought made her smile. No, the houses of the holy were out, all around.

Instead, it was with a heavy heart that she stood on a deserted stretch of beach near Chesapeake Bay at dawn on the twenty-first of December in the year of her Lord, two thousand twelve. And there she stood, without moving, all day long.

What she waited for, she wasn't sure. A bang? A bolt of lightning? A loud, thunderous voice from the Heavens declaring her existence void? Instead she watched the sunrise, and it took all those hours to contemplate the very long life she had lived. As Lilah, a woman at the birth of Christ; as Bernadette, a woman accused of witchcraft and burned; Henrich, an Inquisitor who subsequently sentenced hundreds of women to burning himself... the list was endless, the lives she'd lived.

Not all of them were bad, but meant to shape mens hearts away from God. And as she stood there, she came to understand that, despite all the attempts? Mankind had carried on. Bad things happened, would always happen, and His love was in the good that followed. In the love she saw between mothers and children, husbands and wives...

As the sun set, still without any indication of how her ride to Hell was to be, she felt him before she saw him. Always.

The smile was involuntary and she lowered her head before turning to see Castiel standing there. He hadn't changed since he'd appeared in her bedroom all those years ago and she took a breath.

"Is it time?"

"It is time," he confirmed and held out his hand, though they remained where they stood once she took it. Her curiosity was apparent on her face and he continued. "What have you learned, Penemue?"

She told him. It seemed like the knowledge that she'd absorbed over that many lifetimes on Earth should have taken hours and hours to share, but it came down to love and that was all she could tell him. His slow nod and warm hand, despite the cold air coming from the ocean, told her that she wasn't wrong.

"Where there's love there's God's grace," he told her.

Penemue smiled again, a tear sliding down her cheek.

When they woke up on the morning of the 22nd, a lawyer, a plumber, a professor, a stock broker and a college student went about their business, unaware that millenia had passed by with their whim pulling the strings.