"You've done excellent work, Jack." Duma's voice was gentle, the praise in it muted but present. "When God was in His prime, Heaven was in its glory."

Jack looked around. He remembered Heaven, from the last time he'd been here...well, mostly. He hadn't exactly spent much time out here, in the spaces intended for angels. They looked very different from his personal Heaven, with his mother. Cold and impersonal, with fluorescent lights and gray carpet. Kind of like an office building.

"Working as a team," Duma went on, "we can bring that back."

Jack remembered Duma, as well. Last time, he was pretty sure they had been in a female vessel...or appeared as a female, at least. He wasn't totally sure how things worked in Heaven. Now, Duma was male, dark-haired and smiling. He gestured towards two generic gray chairs, which had suddenly appeared in the room on either side of a black coffee table. Jack sank into one. They were the same color as the carpet, he noticed. And as the suit that Duma was wearing.

He couldn't really see any part of his true form. The most angelic things about him were his wings, gray and white, a slight soft iridescence to his eyes, and the blocky geometric patterns Jack could see pulsing around the edges of his space.

"And Sam and Dean will like that?" Jack asked uncertainly. It seemed almost too good to be true, one perfect thing he could do that would fix what had happened with their mother. That would make things exactly the way that they were before, erase the mistakes he'd made. But if he understood properly what was happening here, he was being offered exactly that by Duma.

He just wanted them to love him again. Even if he couldn't love them back anymore.

"Words can't begin to express how Sam and Dean will feel," Duma assured. "Can I get you anything to eat? Drink?"

"Uh, I guess." Jack wasn't sure when he'd last consumed anything, which couldn't be good. His body was, after all, still partially human.

Between one blink and the next, a candy bar and a paper cup appeared in front of him on the coffee table. The cup looked like the kind of thing he'd get at a gas station, and there was a soft glow coming from beneath the opaque plastic lid. Jack reached for it, popped the lid open. Soda, but with...light in it, cold white.

"What is this?" he asked with a frown.

"That's just how food looks in Heaven," Duma answered. "I'm sorry it's a little odd. We could fix it, but…"

But angels didn't usually need to eat. Jack could accept that. Putting the lid back on, he took a sip, and made a low noise of surprise. It was the best soda he'd ever had, easily. Even disregarding the fact he hadn't had that many, being about two years old.

Duma let him finish the soda and the candy bar both, both excellent, both incredibly good, and refilled the cup with a twitch of his fingers before asking, "Shall we get started?"

Jack belched, wondering too late if he should have stifled it. Sam would have, Dean wouldn't, so probably they canceled each other out. "What do you want me to do?"

"You're going to need your strength. Are you still hungry?" After a moment's consideration, Jack nodded, and a neatly wrapped cheeseburger with light leaking from around the sesame seeds on the bun appeared on the table where the chocolate bar wrapper had been a second ago. "There you go. Now…"

Leaning back in his chair, Duma crossed one leg over the other, and laced his fingers together on top of his knee. It was a very human gesture, and one so obviously practiced it didn't look real. Jack took a bite of his burger. For being so glowy, the food was good. Really good. He'd been a lot hungrier than he'd thought.

"Heaven is in dire straits," Duma stated. "Many members of our family don't want to admit it, but it's been declining since God left. We were able to slow and even arrest the rate of decay for quite a long while, but with all the members of the Host we've lost in the past few years…"

"What's wrong with it?" Jack asked with a frown, looking around as he took another bite of his burger. Everything looked okay to him. He wasn't so good at appreciating beauty or things like that anymore, but he didn't think that would even matter for this part of Heaven. The only issues he could remember from the last time he was here had had to do with the Empty. He wasn't sure having more angels around would have helped with that.

"Power, mostly. There are other things, but we just don't have the resources to keep - " Duma was cut suddenly off by the fluorescent lights around them dimming. Stuttering. Jack's wings, brown and gold and white, bristled with a sudden sense of deep, integral wrongness. That, he could still feel, and he had an immediate and very clear concept of hanging above an endless void within a failing structure, sections crumbling off and falling away as he watched.

It was unpleasant. He stuffed the rest of the burger into his mouth as the lights buzzed back up and the sensation faded.

"Well." Looking about half as rattled as the momentary lapse had left Jack, Duma replaced his burger without being asked. Jack bit instantly into the new one. "To keep that from happening, in part." Duma pushed himself to his feet. His wings, a little out of sorts, smoothed down. "Come with me."

"Mm." Jack swallowed what was in his mouth, washing it down with soda. "Can I bring the food with me?"

Duma smiled. "Absolutely."

So Jack stood up, glass of soda in one hand and second burger in the other, and followed him out of the small room they'd landed in and into the hall. The passageways of Heaven compressed around them, space pinching and weaving to take them where they needed to go in as little time as possible, but the process felt...imperfect. Leaky. Not enough power.

Duma stopped them in front of a door about the time Jack finished his burger. It was labeled in Enochian, and he couldn't read it. As Jack nursed his soda (which, much to his pleasure, seemed to be refilling itself), Duma opened the door, stepping back so he could see inside. Jack frowned.

It was another hallway, apparently endless, lined entirely with doors. Not much different about it from the places they'd already been. But it was almost completely dark, illuminated only by a light flickering in the far off distance, like a star orbiting a black hole.

"What's that?" Jack asked, cocking his head.

"Personalized Heavens," Duma answered. "This is one of the Melissa wings. There's a human soul behind each of those doors, and they should be enjoying their internal reward, as their Creator intended, but…" He trailed off, shaking his head. His wings slumped. "We just don't have the resources right now to maintain them, so their sectors have been shut down, and the souls themselves are being held in stasis." He looked at Jack. "If the situation doesn't improve, we'll no longer be able to house them here at all."

Taking the straw of the soda slowly out of his mouth, Jack concentrated. Thought about how Sam and Dean would react to the idea of hundreds, possibly thousands or even millions of souls being expelled from Heaven despite having earned their rest. It didn't take long for the answer to become obvious.

"That's awful," he said. It made sense now, why fixing Heaven would make them happy.

"Yes." Duma nodded, then appeared to notice the empty wrapper Jack was holding. "Do you want another one?"

Sam and Dean would care about all these people. "Can you do that without...cutting into the power you need?"

Duma smiled. His wings puffed slightly. "Trust me. It's not a problem at all."

"Then yes." After pressing the back of his hand to his mouth in order to keep a belch quiet, Jack added, "Please." Another burger filled his hand as soon as the word was out, and he quickly found out it was just as good as the last two.

"You can see why it's so important, fixing this as quickly as possible," Duma said earnestly as he closed the door. "Why you're so important, Jack."

"Uh huh." Jack paused to take a long pull off his soda, thinking. Tentatively, he asked, "...so you. Need more angels?" He half-remembered a lesson about how Heaven worked, probably from Castiel. He thought he was right, but hoped he wasn't, because he didn't know where to even begin with that and he didn't want to disappoint Sam and Dean. Or Duma.

"Very close," said Duma. It sounded like praise. "We need more of a highly specific type of angel."

Jack considered as he chewed a bite of burger. "Archangels?" He definitely couldn't do that. Probably.

"No. No." Duma laughed softly, shaking his head. "I think we've had more than enough archangels." There was some odd emotion in his voice. He'd folded his wings very tightly behind himself. "No, this is a type of angel you're probably not familiar with."

"What are they?" Jack looked down at his burger. Between it and the soda, he was starting to get full, his belt tight across his stomach. He didn't want to waste it, though. Not with how good it was, and how bad things were here.

"Have you ever heard of…" Duma made a thinking noise, kind of a hiss. "Oh, what do humans call them?" He frowned, saying something in Enochian, then brightened. "Honeypot ants!"

Jack blinked. "No?"

"Fascinating little insects. All of your Grandfather's creations are, of course." Duma began to walk away. Jack assumed he wanted him to follow. "But these ants, they're unique. They live in very harsh environments, and food is sometimes scarce. When it isn't, they have specialized workers who gorge themselves to the point they can't even move. For the good of the colony. This stores the food so it can't spoil, and so they can feed the other ants later. Those are the honeypots. They look like little golden marbles." Duma glanced over his wing. "Oh, you're finished again. Another?"

"No." Jack was full. He reached down with his free hand, undid his belt. But…" He hesitated, then ventured, "Could I get something sweet?"

Duma's head cocked. "Like what?"

It would have to be something Jack could eat one-handed, while walking. He didn't know where they were going, but it didn't look like they were stopping anytime soon. "Ice cream? An ice cream cone."

"Of course." And there it was, in his hand, a large waffle cone with three picture-perfect scoops. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, like something off TV except for the light glittering on it like sprinkles. Even though he wasn't remotely hungry, Jack wasted no time before he started to lap at it.

He'd demolished the strawberry scoop before remembering what they'd been talking about. "Um...I don't get it. Sorry. What do ants have to do with Heaven?"

"Heaven's a lot like a hive," Duma explained patiently. "The insect structure was based on us, actually. Everyone has a role, and we fulfill it for the greater good."

"Yeah, I get that." It made sense. Jack bit into the orb of vanilla ice cream, Grace welling up to counteract the brain freeze. His belly gurgled. "It's the part with the honeypots I don't understand."

"It will make sense in a moment," Duma promised. "Trust me."

Jack was on his second cone by the time they reached the door that was obviously their destination. He hadn't asked for it, but when it had regenerated itself while he was washing the last of the first down with soda, he hadn't been able to resist. As they stopped, his stomach sloshed, and he telepathically undid his fly, sighing at the immediate relief.

Just like the last door, this one was labeled. Pausing in front of it, Duma asked Jack, "Can you read Enochian?"

"No." Jack shook his head. "I was learning, but…" He trailed off, and Duma made a noise of what he thought was disgust, wings twitching.

"I knew leaving you with the Winchesters was a mistake," he said, disapproving. "Anyway." He tapped the label, and then opened the door. "It says 'Replete Mews.'"

"...what?" Jack asked blankly. It just sounded like nonsense to him, and he was still struggling to make sense of it as he followed Duma through the door.

He supposed that he'd expected another hallway like the dark one he'd been shown. That wasn't what he walked into. It was a large, octagonal room, two walls with doors on them, the other six with massive, deep alcoves. Five of the alcoves were empty, the neat labels below them and the things beside them that looked like touch screens blank. They looked very comfortable, lined inside with gray and white padding. Cushions. Something that looked like a white leather harness, tucked neatly away...tubing coiled near the ceiling…

He couldn't devote too much time to examining the empty alcoves, though. Because one of them was occupied. An angel was in it, pinky-white wings out and folded so they framed him, curled up among the cushions and padding and apparently asleep. A thin halo of misty plasma circled his head at eye level. He was wearing clothes that looked a lot like white scrubs, but the fabric was soft and fleecy, like pajamas. His stomach was so inflated they couldn't cover it, shirt rumpled on top. If he hadn't been a guy, or manifesting as one, at least, Jack would have assumed he was pregnant...and if the stretched skin of his middle hadn't been glowing a gentle blue-white from within.

Jack swallowed a mouthful of soda, licked his ice cream without taking his eyes off the angel.

"Hello, Chemosh." Duma hummed, and put an affectionate hand on the angel's stomach. His eyes fluttered open, glowing like his stomach. A dozen eyes opened on the halo, too. He had a round face. All of him was kind of chubby, really.

"Duma." His voice was groggy.

One hand on Chemosh, rubbing gently at his belly, Duma used the other to navigate the touch screen on the wall. He frowned, then turned his attention back to the other angel. "Getting low."

Chemosh said something in Enochian that sounded like an agreement, then asked a question.

"I'm afraid we just don't have the resources right now." The screen flickered, and the lights in the room dimmed. Duma's wings trembled.

Facing Chemosh, he leaned in as Jack watched, and very gently rubbed Chemosh's wings with his own. He had to climb into the alcove and stand on the padding. Jack cocked his head, mouth full of ice cream, as both of their lips parted. Wispy, glowing vapor passed from Chemosh's mouth to Duma's. Duma's eyes began to glow, and it was barely noticeable, but Chemosh's swollen belly also deflated just a bit.

After about a minute, Duma stepped back and out with a little shudder. Every feather on his wings had bristled, to the point Jack could see pink skin between them. Walking stiffly over to the wall, Duma put a hand on it, wings tensing and head bowing. His eyes glowed. Then his hand, and then the wall right underneath his palm. A second later, the lights brightened again, and the screen next to Chemosh's alcove stabilized.

"All right." Duma relaxed, wings smoothing. The glow had gone, and now he just looked tired. "That ought to hold it for a while."

He glanced at Chemosh, whose eyes had closed again. He looked like he'd fallen back asleep. Turning to Jack, Duma folded his hands in front of him, and asked, "Do you understand now?"

"I...think so," Jack began slowly. His cone had regenerated again, but this time, he didn't immediately start eating. Just licked the last of the ice cream off his lips, and nodded to Chemosh. "He's what you were talking about. The honeypot. But he's full of Grace, not food."

"Exactly." Duma smiled.

"Why store Grace in angels, though?" Jack asked, frowning. "You can keep it in jars, bottles...I've seen it."

"For the same reason ants store food in members of their colony." Duma said it like he shouldn't have had to explain, like Jack should already have known. "No matter how specialized the container, no matter how well-warded or -insulated, Grace...degrades outside of angels, Jack. It evaporates. It becomes less powerful, less potent. Stored here…" He put a hand on Chemosh again, who murmured in his sleep but didn't wake. "It keeps indefinitely. Much more difficult to steal, too."

Duma smiled. There was something sad about it, something Jack could read in the set of his wings.

"There used to be repletes who generated their own extra Grace, once they'd been fed enough of it," he murmured. "Very rare. Very valuable. They're all gone now, though. Extinct caste." He appeared to shake himself out of it. "We should go. There's more I need to show you."

"Wait," Jack blurted, and Duma paused even as he was turning away from him. "So, I know there's probably not a trash can around here, but…"

Duma cocked his head. "Why do you need a trash can?"

"I'm done with these." A little awkwardly, Jack lifted his soda and his ice cream, then burped. "I, um. I'm really full."

He was. He could feel where his stomach had started to press out against his shirt, sometime around the last bite of his previous cone. It was making audible noises, gurgling, sloshing. He didn't remember the last time he'd been so full, wasn't sure he ever had been.

He shouldn't have eaten so much. He wasn't sure why he had. It wasn't as if it would ever fill the pervasive hollowness that crept up and down the insides of him, where something warm and soft had once lived.

"Oh, do you want something else?" asked Duma. Jack shook his head.

"No. I think I'm done eating." Even Dean would probably call it quits at this point.

"You've had a lot of ice cream," Duma pointed out. "That's…'sweet,' right? I understand that can be boring to a humanoid palate. Do you want something 'salty?'"

He asked the questions like somebody who didn't understand what the flavors were. Which, of course, he wouldn't. Jack firmly said, "No, I'm done."

"We really should have been switching off," Duma commented, as if to himself. "I do know some human foods. Do you like nachos?"

"Yeah, but I don't want any right now."

"What about french fries?"

"I don't want any."

"Potato chips?"

"No. Nothing. I'm done."

"Well, I have to give you something," Duma said, and his tone was so perfectly reasonable, and touched with just enough frustration, that it gave Jack pause.

Had he done something wrong? He didn't think he had. But then, a second later, it clicked for him.

He was being rude. He hadn't even known it. The polite thing to do, when someone offered you food, was accept. He should have realized, but he hadn't thought to check the situation against his moral compass of the Winchesters. He couldn't make that mistake again. Just in case it wound up being more important than a simple question of manners.

"I'm sorry," Jack said, very carefully. "I would like something. Nachos would be excellent." And half a second later, barely remembered in time, "Thank you."

"All right." Duma's wings rose in what Jack thought was probably relief. "Finish what you have then, and I'll get you some nachos. Let's go."

As Duma led him through the door, Jack returned less than enthusiastically to the ice cream. He could feel his stomach bounce slightly and slosh with every step. At least the soda cup had stopped refilling itself.

The next room was identical to the first, except that every alcove was empty, and the lights were off. The glow coming off what was left of Jack's ice cream cone lit the way just fine, though. It was a good thing, because the next room was dark too, and the room after that. By then, he'd finished both the ice cream and the soda, but a box of nachos replaced them in his hands, light glittering up from between the chips. It looked like the kind of thing you'd get in a stadium - he'd never been to a ballgame, despite Dean's occasional promises to take him, but he'd watched plenty of TV. Grease-spotted cardboard box, dripping cheese, golden corn chips, chunks of meat, extra jalapeños.

Dean would have loved it. Making use of the plastic fork sticking up in the middle, Jack began to shovel it in, despite his complaining belly. After all, it didn't hurt.

"How many of these rooms are there?" he asked Duma through a full mouth.

"A dozen. Only three currently have occupants. We can manifest more, but...that hasn't been necessary in a long time." Duma's wings were hunched, sad. He looked halfway at Jack, and his eyes were glowing. Probably so he could see in the dark.

Jack had stopped counting the rooms, but they went through several more dark ones. With the way the doors were located, he was pretty sure that the rooms were arranged in a circle. There must have been a twelve-sided room in the middle. He wondered what was in it.

He finished his nachos. They were replaced immediately by a bag of doughnut holes, shining powdered sugar with a luminous jelly filling. Apparently, Duma was firm on the salty-sweet thing.

Finally, they came to another well-lit room. There were two angels in this one, and their bellies were even smaller than Chemosh's had been. One's stomach was even covered by her clothes, and she was awake, preening her black-and-red wings. The other was dozing. Duma didn't acknowledge either of them, just led Jack to the next door.

"There's only one proper replete remaining," he told Jack. "We've avoided dipping into him for as long as possible. He's a relic of a bygone age, a...symbol of what Heaven once was, what it could be again. I'm reluctant to violate him for exactly that reason, despite the unfortunate circumstances." He opened the door. "Yedaiah."

Stepping into the room, Jack was barely paying attention to Duma. He'd left one doughnut hole in the bag so that he could have a little bit of time to catch his breath (did he need to breathe? Especially in Heaven? He would test that later) before something else showed up for him to eat. A long, low belch rumbled slowly out of him, punctuated by a sharp little hiccup that had him wincing in something that was more discomfort than actual pain.

He put a hand, fingers coated with sugar, on his stomach. It was round and bloated. He could feel it gurgling with digestion, and when it looked down, it was straining against the fabric of his shirt, bowing it out with his jacket framing it on either side.

He thought there might be light coming from it. Just a slight glow. That would be normal, since all the food he'd eaten had been so bright. With how much of it he'd eaten too. He might just be seeing things, too.

A faint noise from Duma prompted Jack to look up, and then he forgot all about his stomach.

The small size of Chemosh and the other angels had made Jack wonder just why the alcoves in these rooms were so huge. They were dwarfed in them, floating where they were held in place by their harnesses and cradled by their wings. Seeing Yedaiah gave him an answer: they were so big because the repletes were supposed to fill them. Supposed to spill out of them.

Yedaiah was the largest living thing Jack had ever seen in person, only maybe excluding the elephants he'd seen during a visit to the Topeka Zoo. His wings, the colors of wheat and black earth, were squashed into the sides of the alcove by his bulk. His perfectly round face, cheeks so plump they almost obscured his closed, long-lashed eyes, rested in the pillowy swell of enormous breasts, sunk so deep Jack couldn't see his nose or mouth. Most of what he could see was Yedaiah's stomach, swollen past obscenity, filling almost the entire alcove, protruding past it. Almost perfectly round, it bowed slightly under its own weight, threatening to touch the floor. The skin was so thin it looked like touching it would pop him, and the glow off Yedaiah's gut would have been nearly blinding to a human, the blue-white of angelic Grace. All of him glowed, but his belly was brightest.

Jack popped the last doughnut hole into his mouth without thinking. His hands were filled with a movie-sized bucket of popcorn, butter glowing.

A halo of lightning geometry encircled the stomach, framed it, but looked like it would snap if Yedaiah inhaled too hard. Jack couldn't see his arms or legs. He wasn't even totally sure that Yedaiah was a "he;" Jack was tentatively assuming based on the short hair.

As he stood there watching, Yedaiah trembled a little, and his gut rocked. A monumental sloshing noise came from inside him, the Grace that inflated him nearly to bursting swirling around. Duma let out a happy sigh.

"Isn't he beautiful?" he murmured, eyes fixed on Yedaiah.

"No," Jack said bluntly, before he could calculate whether or not that was an answer Sam and Dean would have given. Duma turned to him, smirking.

"Well," he said, "you'd think differently if you'd grown up in a proper environment." He put a hand on the small of Jack's back. It felt weirdly good, good enough for Jack's wings to twitch a little. When had somebody last touched him? "Come on."

Duma took Jack through a final door. One that he automatically knew led to the room in the middle of the...whatever it was called. He instantly liked it better than any of the replete rooms, and also all the rest of Heaven that he'd seen so far. It was soft, comfortable, welcoming. The walls curved slightly where they met the floor and ceiling, and were covered in something velvety and quilted. The light was softer here. All the furniture, mostly couches and things like beds, had deep cushions and curved edges, and large cushions were scattered around for easy use. There was a lot of blue and gold and pastel colors.

"Like Yedaiah," Duma murmured, "this room's a relic. Of what Heaven used to be." He guided Jack to the couch, sitting down. It was designed for angels, had a low back so that they could hook their wings over it. Jack sat, grunting. His belly squished against his thighs, and pushed out from under his shirt. It was definitely glowing. "Do you know now what we need your help with?"

"You want me to make more...repletes, right?" Jack frowned. "I don't really know ho - "

"No. We…more or less have all we need."

Jack blinked. That wasn't what he'd been told earlier, but he didn't question it.

"Then." He looked down at his popcorn. "You need me to...refill the ones you have?" Visceral disgust at the idea prickled his feathers.

"No." Duma shook his head. He readjusted himself on the couch, so that his arm was along the back of it behind Jack, and one of his wings, too. He looked down at his popcorn too, and cocked his head. "Why aren't you eating?"

"I…"

"We did a lot of research on human food, before we brought you here. A lot. On what you enjoy, too. Grease, fat...sugar..."

"I know. I'm sorry." Jack was momentarily proud of himself: he'd barely even had to think about the apology, this time. "I'm just...thirsty."

"Oh?" Duma cocked his head in the owlish way Jack had seen so often from Castiel. An ache of missing, less an actual emotion than the memory of one, stabbed him somewhere in the chest. "Well, we can fix that."

Another paper cup, like the one Jack had had earlier, appeared in Duma's hand. He lifted it, guiding the straw between Jack's lips with his index finger, making an odd, affectionate little clucking noise in the back of his throat. It made Jack feel warm inside, made his wings puff some, even as he began to drink. More soda.

It was good. It was so good.

"Better?" Duma asked, drawing the soda away after several huge swallows from Jack. He burped. It made his stomach jiggle a little.

"Uh huh." To punctuate it, he stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Duma smiled.

"There we go." After every handful, Duma offered Jack more soda. He drank. Duma had begun to massage Jack's belly with his wing joint, and it felt good, incredibly good. He wanted to ask again what they needed from him, but Duma seemed to want him to eat right now, and he wanted to make him happy.

Groaning, Jack looked down at himself once the bucket of popcorn was nearly gone. At his belly. His shirt didn't cover it at all anymore. He was so full...he was so big. He touched himself with a greasy hand, could feel that his belly button had popped out, a soft little nub on the front of him.

Round and soft, spreading out where it rested on his thighs, it glowed. It looked like he had a lightbulb on his middle.

It was the same color as the Grace that filled Chemosh and Yedaiah. Jack felt suddenly very paranoid, but - Duma had taken him in. Duma was helping him get his family back. Duma was family, like an uncle or something, he wouldn't hurt him.

"Do you know what this place is, Jack?" Duma asked him once the popcorn was gone. He was feeding him pie now, straight out of the tin with a fork. Mouth full, he shook his head. "It's one of the most important part of the mews. It's where, in days gone by, repletes were...well, there is no English word for it, but 'seduced' comes close. Courted. It's where they were all originally filled. Any angel can technically become a replete. It's the most flexible caste. Isn't that interesting?"

Jack began to frown. He drew his wings in close to himself.

"Um - " he started, but a forkful of pie cut him off.

"I really ought to tell you why you're here, shouldn't I?" Duma smiled brilliantly. In the dim light, his eyes glowed. Jack's belly had so much give under his wing. "If we were planning to use you for anything else, it would be downright concerning, that you haven't figured it out yet. I knew you were naive, and desperate, but...it's been a shock, realizing just how incredibly stupid you are. If Lucifer can see you somehow, I can't imagine how humiliated he is."

"Hey - " Offended, Jack began to push himself off the couch, but Duma shoved him back down, and he felt heavy as the pie was finished up and swapped for pizza. Pizza and more soda.

"I'm sorry, fledgling. You know our kind are blunt. And it's a compliment, really. You were made for this. Dumb cattle, mindless gluttons...ideal."

Jack moaned. Too full.

"You see," Duma went on, cramming a slice of pizza into a mouth that was less willing by the second, "we don't need the repletes we have to be refilled. We don't even necessarily need more repletes. We just need...one more. One more of that special kind. That bottomless well. One whose engine will churn out endless power once it's been primed with a massive, Grace-infused feast."

Jack's belly swelled. And swelled. Inflating more and more, doughnuts and cake and burritos and pasta and milkshakes and beer, pinning him to the couch, forcing his legs apart. His internal mechanisms loudly churned through it.

Too much!

The blue-white had taken on a hint of gold.

"A nephilim, especially one sired by one of the two most powerful archangels to ever live, seemed like a very good candidate indeed." Duma packed glowing food into Jack, grinding it down his throat with the heel of his hand. He ran his other hand lovingly over the massive swell of his distended gut. "It looks like our guess was correct. I can't express to you how happy that makes me."

Jack wished he could say something, but he couldn't even breathe...couldn't move. Only eat.

Big. Heavy.

So much…

More?

There was a wavering switch, on the edge of flipping. It terrified Jack in a way nothing had, not even losing the Winchesters, since he'd burned off his own soul.

"This is your heritage, Jack," Duma assured him in an affectionate murmur. "It will come naturally. It would to all of us, but...you'll most likely be the last we ever need."

Jack hiccuped.

"Now, you are half-human," Duma cautioned, "so we'll likely need to feed you much more, maybe constantly, to ensure the proper corpulence to manufacture the amounts of Grace we'll need to keep Heaven running. But I hardly mind taking that on. I may enjoy it. I've always wondered what it would be like, you know, to have a pet."

Something appeared in his hand. When Jack saw it, his eyes widened, and he shook his head frantically. Duma cooed at him, petted him soothingly with wings and hands.

"It's all right, plump one, we're almost finished," he assured as he fed the funnel into Jack's mouth. "A growing nephilim needs plenty to eat, and there's only so much Grace you can consume in food." An affectionate little nuzzle to his hair, another to his belly. "We need to pay another visit to Yedaiah."