4 - Silver Linings

When they get home Chi is there, looking miserable and small. Ben goes straight to her and awkwardly hugs her, trying not to knock her with his cast.

"I am so sorry," the little angel murmurs and Ben pulls back to look at her.

"Why?"

"I should have been there to defend you."

"Why weren't you?" Dean asks.

Chi looks positively woe-be-gone. "I was momentarily called away…though looking back the reason was relatively minor. The messenger should have come to me, not the other way 'round."

The small hairs on the back of Dean's neck rise. He narrows his eyes. "You think we were set up?"

Which he so does not need. Not right now. Not ever. He thought they were just beginning to get things right; he has a steady job, a home. He helps with homework each night with Ben, lets Lisa bully him into doing household chores, has family dinners, roars encouragement from the stands at the kid's ball games and sleeps in the same bed each night with the same women and these days? Mostly drifts off with a smile on his face.

And all this…this Heaven vs. Hell bullshit? Its not his life anymore, damn it. The only reason Chi's allowed to stay is because she's here to look after all of them. She's become a fixture. Lisa's taken to telling people she's their au pair (which Dean usually finds hilarious).

Right now there is nothing hilarious about the situation.

"Chi, that thing almost killed Ben and I –" Lisa grips his hand tightly – "and it did kill Singer."

The angel blinks at him. "What?"

"The damn Dog killed our badger, Chi."

Chi shakes her head. "No it didn't."

They all stare at her. "What do you mean?" asks Ben. "Dad said he was dead…"

"Well, he stopped breathing for a while, I'll grant you," Chi tells them matter-of-factly. "But he's not dead."

Ben looks like a light has come on behind his eyes. "Really?"

"I did say I would fix things. I put him back in the garden to sleep. Which is better now," she adds, turning to Lisa. "The Dog made a terrible mess of it, but it's fixed."

"Oh," Lisa says faintly. "Thank you."

Chi beams.

"What about the Dog?" Dean asks when Ben has taken off out back to go check on his stripy friend (they can hear Ben talking and laughing, and soft, cheerful badger-grumbles from Singer). "Did you kill it?"

"Well, no."

"…what?" he says sharply.

"I just took it away."

Something about the way she says it makes Dean suspicious. "Took it where, Chi?"

"Oh, you know, Antarctica," she tells them, carelessly flipping one hand, "about two hundred feet below the Ross Ice Shelf."

Lisa freezes in the middle of putting coffee on and stares. So does Dean.

"In all probability it's been eaten by a sperm whale by now," Chi says. Then adds thoughtfully, "or a colossal squid."

"Right," says Dean, "well that's one way of doing it."

Three weeks later Ben's got a new fiberglass cast in dark blue. By this point it's already a mess of names and doodles from the kids in his class. He tells people a rabid dog got into the back yard and attacked him and his dad, but that the au pair helped scare it off.

Chi is extra vigilant, and stalks about the place like a little cat with her back up, all wild brown hair and ridiculously blue eyes. She reminds Dean of Cas; not just in the resemblance between vessels, but the way she carries herself now. (Though she still hasn't got the hang of landings, and has a tendency to crash into furniture whenever she flutters into the house.)

Lisa keeps giving Dean these long, thoughtful looks that alternately make him preen or shuffle uncomfortably. Then she'll smile, and go back to whatever she's doing. He wonders what she's thinking when she looks at him like that, but never asks.

Life sinks back into its semblance of normal, with two exceptions.

Ben calls Dean 'Dad'…and appears to now be afraid of dogs.

Dean's quite enamored of the first development, but not terribly happy about the second.

So, of course, he decides to do something about it.

AN: I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't kill Singer. I mean come on. What's the use of having an angel around the house if she doesn't resurrect brutally savaged family pets?