Chapter 5 - I'll Keep On Trying

The house was bustling with activity when they got back from the funeral home. Liz and Gabriel had been acting as erstwhile hosts for all the humans who had been arriving, and they had been deploying their Angel family members to put out food, and coffee and tea. Liz had been doing some cooking and baking at Cas and Gail's house as well, and they had all been discreetly popping in and out of there. But Bobby had advised everyone very sternly about that. As far as any of these people knew, they were all humans. End of story.

When the immediate family arrived, Frank had just stood there at first. He hadn't ever seen this many people in the house at once, and it threw him for a loop. He was reminded of Cas and Gail's place, at Christmastime. But then, everybody started looking at him with those expressions. The ones that were a peculiar mixture of sympathy and concern, almost as if they expected him to have a meltdown, or something.

Dean grabbed Frank's arm and steered him to the dining room. He'd expected to see a bar set up there, he remarked. But as he looked around now, the elder Winchester saw a lot of women, including some older ladies, and some kids. Presumably, they were the cops' kids, or the neighbours', maybe.

"Wrong crowd," Gabriel said to the men. "Bobby said most of the cops she worked with, and some female sheriffs too, will be coming to the wake at the bar, later on. So Liz just made coffee and tea. I could go over to the bunker, if you want. Get a few libations from there."

"Yeah, couldja? That'd be great," Dean said, as Sam approached them. "Can you try to be quiet when you're there, Gabriel?" he asked the Archangel. "I don't want you to scare Becky, or the baby."

Gabriel looked at him. Yeah, right. Scare the baby. The only way THAT baby was gonna be scared by anybody was if they were holding Gabe's blade in their hand at the time. But he wasn't going to say that, of course. Cas was right. They had time for that particular dilemma. Nearly a decade, before things got really hairy. They had to deal with Raguel, first. But before they'd had the chance to have that little discussion, Jody had died, and they'd all been dealing with that. So the Beast could sleep easy in his crib for now. Gabe was actually surprised the kid's diapers weren't bursting into flames in that bunker. He guessed that even the famed Men of Letters hadn't had any idea how to ward against the actual Beast of the Apocalypse.

"Daddy, can I go to my room?" Angela said, tugging on Frank's pant leg. "Auntie Liz said she put Poochie and Ralph on my bed. Am I allowed to bring them to the kitchen with me? Rob said I can have some juice."

Frank smiled down at his daughter. "Of course you can take them to the kitchen," he told her. "This is your house. You bring them anywhere you want."

Rob took Angela by the hand, and now, Eric was checking the table that held the food and beverages, to see if anything needed replenishing. Boy, had those guys ever stepped up, Frank thought. They were excellent caregivers for Angela, and they almost always did stuff around the house without being asked.

"Excuse me; Frank?" A shorter, brown-haired woman approached him now, extending her hand. Frank shook with her, but he looked at her blankly. "Nelly. Dr. Vukovic," she introduced herself.

"Oh. Yeah. Jody's doctor friend, from Sioux Falls," Frank said.

"Yes, that's right. I'm very sorry for your loss," Nelly said. "Jody was a good friend, and a good person. You have a very nice home here, and a lovely family."

"Thanks," Frank said. He realized he had no idea what to say to this woman. He had no idea what to say to any of these people. Fortunately, she seemed to realize that, because the doctor moved away, after having offered her condolences.

"Man, I'm not very good at this kind of thing," Frank said to the Winchesters.

"And you call yourself a politician," Gail quipped, poking her brother's arm. She had taken a minute or two elsewhere in the house to put her game face on, and now she felt like she was ready to help.

"Where's Cas?" Dean asked her.

"He's talking to Nicole, Richard and Wilma in the living room," Gail replied. "As soon as we got here, Nicole asked if he would mind going to get them. They wanted to pay their respects, too. Why don't you guys go and say hi?" She looked at Frank. "You can tell them how much she liked the movie."

Frank put his arm around her. "You're all right, kiddo," he told Gail. "Well, you know, for a little sister, anyway."

"Hey, has anybody seen Gabriel?" Gail asked the men.

Dean told her where he'd gone, and Gail nodded. "That's a good idea," she remarked. "I'll go over there and help him." She lowered her voice. "I don't want him snapping a million bottles over here, all of a sudden." She looked up at Sam. "Don't worry; we'll be quiet." Then she walked out, towards the kitchen. She could go to Rob or Eric's room in the extra wing, and then wink herself out.

As Frank headed to the living room with Sam and Dean, and Gail was popping over to the bunker to help Gabriel, Barry was in the kitchen, asking Liz if he could help her with anything.

"No thanks, Barry," she said. She was loading the dishwasher. "We've had so many people helping out that everything's under control. Where's Tommy?"

"Paul offered to pop him over to our place," Barry replied. "Carolyn's there with the kids, but she wanted to see everybody, too. He was going to take her place sitting with the kids, but when Rob was taking Angela to her room, he said to bring them all."

"Oh, great," Liz said, brightening. "The more kids the better, right now. It's impossible to be sad around kids."

Barry grinned. "You might feel differently when they get here. Peter's going through that picky-eating stage right now. He won't eat any green vegetables. None. He's driving us nuts. I tried everything. I even sang to him: 'All we are saying is Give Peas A Chance'. He looked at me like I was certifiable, but Tommy laughed so hard he nearly snorted his beer out of his nose."

"That's actually pretty good," Liz said, nodding her approval. "You should tell Frank that one."

The two of them were silent for a moment, their hearts heavy for Frank. They would all have to rally around Gail's brother for a while.

Gabriel was rooting around in the bunker's kitchen when Gail got there. "What are you doing?" she asked him irritably. "I could hear you all the way down the hall!"

He was opening cupboards and rattling pots and pans around. "I'm trying to find something to put a few bottles in," he responded. "Bobby said not to zap anything over there, so I'm looking for..." He pulled out a colander, looked at it curiously, then put it back. "Geez! How do humans get anything done? Ever?" he groused.

Gail rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "You know, you could have just grabbed a bottle in each hand and made several trips," she told him. "But I'm here now, and it's a good thing I am, apparently. You grab two, I'll grab two, and we'll be done. Even Frank, Sam and Dean can't drink that much in a few hours. We're having Jody's wake at the Hunter bar later, so we don't need to take the whole bar over to his house. Now, come on. Put everything back, but do it quietly. Sam didn't want us to wake up the baby." Or Becky either, Gail thought. Gail had been here when Sam and Dean had been getting ready to go to the funeral home. Becky had asked Sam when he was going to be back, and Sam had said that he didn't know. Then Dean had told Becky to clam up. She wasn't Sam's wife, was she? What the hell did she care? Then she had started to cry, saying that Sam had hardly spent any time with Brian in the past few days, and Sam had reminded her that he had been helping Frank with Jody's funeral arrangements, and Gail had been glaring at Becky, just barely resisting the urge to march up to the girl and tell her to shut her big, stupid, self-centered mouth. So, needless to say, Gail wasn't especially eager to see Becky right now. And Gabriel wouldn't be of any help to her in that situation. He would probably set up a booth and sell tickets to the fight.

"Oh, yes. The baby," Gabriel muttered. "Heaven forbid we should wake up the baby." He started replacing the pots and pans he'd taken out of the cupboard by hand, but then he made an impatient sound. He waved his hand, and they all flew into the cupboards. The doors slammed shut.

"What part of being quiet don't you understand?" Gail exclaimed.

Gabriel straightened up, turning around to look at her. "Hey, since you and I are alone for a second, let me ask you something," he said to her.

"What?" she said, tilting her head, waiting for the quip or double entendre she was sure was to come.

But Gabriel surprised her. "Has Cas said anything to you about that baby?"

She looked closer at his face. "What do you mean? Like what?"

Gabe nodded slowly. He should have figured as much. Castiel was at it again. "OK, let me try another question, then," he said to her. "Has he mentioned anything about any Prophecies?"

Gail was bewildered. "OK, I'm completely confused, now. What about Cas and the baby? What Prophecies? What the hell are you talking about? Did I fall asleep in the middle of a conversation, or something? He hasn't mentioned anything to me about anything." But her heart was sinking now, because now, the weird stuff he had been saying at their house just before they'd gone to meet with Crowley was starting to make a little sense. Well, Castiel sense, that was. Gail swore that when she had a minute, she was going to go on social media and lobby to have the phrase "Castiel sense" listed in the Urban Dictionary, right next to "mansplaining". He would dance around a subject like one of those professional ballroom dancers, feeling her out for her views on whatever it was he didn't want to tell her, and then he would tell her about it at the eleventh hour, and she would just have to accept it, because by that time, it was already pretty much a fait accompli. Like their annulment. Oh, and by the way, before we can remarry, you'll have to marry some other guy. Boom. Then there was that dustup they'd had in Las Vegas recently. She had let him off the hook about that, but now she was wondering if she should have. Did that have anything to do with what Gabriel was talking about now? And, if so, how come HE knew about it, and she didn't?

Now Gabriel was wondering if he should have just kept his big yap shut. But he thought his Brother was being a giant ass right now. To give Cas the benefit of the doubt, maybe he'd thought that Gail couldn't stand to receive any more bad news at the moment. But was it really fair to keep her in the dark about something so big? The Prophecies had mentioned her too, and up until just recently, she'd been staying here in the bunker, with the Beast of the Apocalypse just down the hall. That kid may be a baby right now, and the bunker's generic warding was probably muting whatever abilities he may have at such a tender age. But Gabriel was willing to bet that that situation wouldn't hold for long.

"You know what? I'm not going to do this," Gail said, throwing up her arms in frustration. "We need to get back to Frank's house. I don't feel like being mad at you or Cas right now. I just want to be there for my brother. But believe me when I say we'll all be talking some more about this later."

Gabriel let out a breath. Phew. He had dodged a bullet, at least for the time being. "OK, Kitten," he said.

They popped to the room with the bar, got the bottles of liquor, and popped back out of the bunker.

Baby Brian lay in his crib as Becky slept. She hadn't heard a thing. But Brian's eyes were wide open, almost as if he'd been listening to every word that the Angels had said.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Wilma said to Frank. That phrase was coming up on the outside now, trying to take the lead, Frank thought. Although he still thought that "At least she's not in pain any more" was slightly ahead.

But he thanked her, because that was what you did. "She really liked the movie," Frank said to her and Richard. "Thanks for doing that. That was a great night for us." The last one, he added mentally.

"Don't thank me; it was all Chuck's idea," Richard responded. "How is Laurel doing, by the way? We were all so shocked to hear about Chuck. Cas filled the three of us in on what really happened, but of course, no one on the production crew knows - " he dropped his voice, looking around " - about his status. They were all asking about the funeral, but we had to say that it was a private family service. But everyone wanted to do something, so they passed the hat and took up a collection. I asked Cas what he thought we should do with the money, and he suggested I should take it and give it to the women's shelter. And of course, we'll do an 'In Memoriam' at the end of the movie, like we did for Ted - I mean, Metatron."

"Geez, maybe you should just stop making those movies. This is the second scriptwriter you've lost now, isn't it?" Sam said, and then he looked instantly contrite. "I'm sorry. That was in poor taste," he apologized.

"How are YOU doing?" Frank asked Nicole. "I heard about all the troubles you had in Ottawa, with your grandfather's house. Is everything OK now?"

She looked at Gail's brother, surprised. He had just buried his wife, and he was asking about her piddly problems? "Yeah, it is," she answered him. "I changed my mind about selling it, though, at least for the time being. I had to go back to my job in Vancouver, but now that they're finished shooting the additional scenes, I think I might go back, for a while. It's nice there in the summer, and my Grandpa's still got a bunch of stuff I haven't sorted through, yet." She smiled warmly at Richard. "I work with the kindest people in the world," she added. "They passed the hat for me too, and the actors were more than generous. I was able to recoup all my Grandpa's funeral costs, so it's not as urgent for me to sell the house, now."

Dean was glad. He wasn't sure where they stood at the moment as far as PDAs went, but he slipped his arm around her anyway, and gave her a squeeze. He knew how strapped she'd been financially following her grandfather's funeral, and how proud she had been about accepting any kind of help. But it sounded like her co-workers hadn't really given her a choice, and he could also understand why it had been easier for her to take the money from them than from him.

Gail came into the room, standing between Frank and Dean. "Hi, everybody," she said. "I set up a bar in the kitchen, if anybody wants to partake." She looked up at her brother. "Have you eaten?"

He sighed. "Liz asked me the same thing. But I just want to have a drink, right now. Maybe I'll change into my jeans, too. I promise you I'll have something to eat before we go to the wake. OK?"

"Okay," Gail said, nodding.

"Hey, Bobby, let's go to the kitchen for a minute," Frank said, moving away from the group. Their friend was dressed in a suit too, and he was standing in a corner of the living room talking to a gaggle of older ladies from the collection division of the cancer charity. He was obviously in courtly Southern gentleman mode right now, but those ladies would think he was a human, and most of them were widows, or ladies who owned three or more cats. Bless their hearts.

Bobby looked up gratefully. "Excuse me, ladies," he said politely, and then he joined Frank. "Thanks," he said out of the corner of his mouth, and Gail's brother put his hand on Bobby's shoulder. Bobby'd been so good to them throughout this whole thing. The man was God, but he had always taken the time to be here whenever he was available, helping out with the kids, and with whatever else was needed. "No, Bobby, I should be thanking YOU," Frank said.

"Well, you are," Bobby said affably. "You'll be buying me my drinks tonight. Then, at the end of the night, whatever the tab is for all of us, it'll be mysteriously covered."

Frank stopped walking, looking at Bobby's face. "Just like all the funeral expenses were magically paid, when I went to write them a cheque?"

"We take care of our own, Son," Bobby said, gazing into Frank's eyes. "We always have, and we always will."

Son. Bobby had never called Frank that before. It threw him, for a minute. Bobby Singer didn't use that term lightly. Frank's eyes prickled with tears. Out of all the people who he'd thought might make him cry today, God wouldn't have even cracked the Top 20. So, Frank being Frank, he blinked the tears away and said, "Well, in that case, can I borrow the car keys, Dad? Or is the chariot with the winged horses in the shop?"

Bobby's beard twitched. "Maybe another time," he said. "You're not supposed to drink and chariot."

The men smiled at each other, and continued on to the kitchen.

Benoit Levesque was settling in as the elected President now, slowly deploying his staff into their various responsibilities, and departments of his cabinet. He had goals, of course, and agendae. But this had to be done gradually, and it had to be done right. He did not want another French Revolution on his hands, he thought with some humour.

The first thing he was going to do was to tighten security at the airports, train stations, and bus depots. Any place at which people could enter his country. Benoit didn't think there would be too much resistance to that idea. People were scared of terrorists, and terrorists were almost always from a different country, or claimed responsibility for heinous acts on behalf of those countries. A frightened and demoralized public wasn't able to make that distinction, or if they were, they didn't care to. All they knew was that they needed to feel safe when they were sitting on the patio at their local bistro, having a few glasses of wine after work.

But Benoit needed to do much, much more, and he needed the support of the people in order to do it. Well, he supposed he didn't really NEED their support, but he would like it. It was a lot easier to get things done when you had the full support of your people.

That was why he had sent his two teleporters, Hugh and Cody, out of the country to start the border project. They were going to drive into France from various points, deploying bombs that Toby had made in Dr. Roarke's laboratory to places just inside the borders. Now that Benoit ran the country, he knew where all of the security cameras were situated. Most of the time, if such nefarious activities were planned, the perpetrators would want to be as far away from surveillance cameras as possible. However, in this case, Benoit needed for them to be spotted. The boys were going to bail out of the trucks just before they crossed the border, and the immigrants they would hire to make the deliveries would be caught on camera, driving across the border to plant explosives. After a couple of those types of incidents, Benoit didn't think he would have any trouble passing a resolution that would allow him to set up Border Patrols and Checkpoints all around the country, and start to institute racial profiling. Other countries had done the latter, whether they admitted it or not. At the moment, he was very popular in the polls, but Benoit also knew that the bloom would come off the rose very quickly if he did not act soon, and follow up on his campaign promises.

He picked up the phone and asked his secretary to put through a call to Michelle Delacroix. They were keeping things under wraps for now, but when she came for a visit in the summertime, he was going to wine and dine her, and pour on the charm, and they were going to set the wedding date. By the time she was ready to go back to the States, he was hoping to be able to announce to the people of France that they could look forward to having a First Lady very soon.

"So, the guy had his hearing aid turned down," Bobby was telling the people grouped around the bar. "Jody and I flashed our badges and told him we were Agents McVie and Buckingham, and he *just stood there, squinting at our faces. So Jody says 'What are you looking at?", and he says, 'Asians? You don't look like no Asians to me.' We had to leave, before we were laughing so hard."

Everybody in the assembled group was laughing, too. They'd been telling old war stories for a couple of hours now, and eventually, the police officers and sheriffs had drifted out of the bar, many of them still laughing. Now it was down to family and close friends, and Dean had locked the front doors of the bar so they would be assured of having the place to themselves.

"How's Brian?" Frank asked Sam. "How's being a dad? Dean says you've baby-proofed just about everything in the place." "Dean exaggerates," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

"Well, if you do that thing to the toilet, just make sure you don't spring-load it," Rob said, nudging Sam. "I spent the night with a woman who had that thing on there, and I got up in the middle of the night to go. I nearly gave myself one hell of a circumcision." He looked sheepishly at Frank. "Whoops. I get the feeling I might have just overshared, a bit."

"Or a lot," Eric wisecracked, pouring out some more shots. He had hopped behind the bar, joking that he'd always wanted free rein at a drinking establishment. They had all kept the mood light, knowing this was the kind of send-off that Jody had really preferred.

Once the shots had been poured for everyone, Bobby raised his. "To Jody," he said. And that was all. Tomorrow, the humans were going to wake up with big heads and sick stomachs, and there would be a hole that no one could fill, a hollow space in their lives where Jody should be. Life would go on, because it always did, whether you participated in it or not. Frank would go back to work, his young sons would go back on the road, and Angela would either go back to receiving Angel daycare or start going to school. Frank hadn't decided yet. But they were on the verge of summer now, so he had time. He had nothing but time, in a way. After this, everybody would be going back to their usual routines, and they would probably check in on him a bit more often, for a while. But then that would drop off, and soon Frank would be on his own, looking at the empty side of the bed, a half-full closet, and an empty chair across the kitchen table. And then what would he do? Wait to live his life again, without the person who had made it complete? They had always kind of ridiculed Cas and Gail, and the over-the-top way they were with each other. But now, for the first time, Frank totally got it. How were you supposed to wake up every morning, knowing that the person you loved more than anything wasn't beside you? And it wasn't because they were downstairs in the kitchen making coffee or breakfast, or even just in the bathroom having a pee. It was because they were dead, dead and gone, and they would never, ever be coming back. How the hell did people DO it? Frank had no idea. He might just owe his sister a big, fat apology. When Cas had been dead and gone, Frank had told Gail that she had to face facts; Cas was gone, and she had to accept that and get on with her life. Well, look at Frank now. What a damn hypocrite he was. Now that it was Jody who was gone, Frank had no idea how he was supposed to go on without her. None. How could he be expected to? Why should he HAVE to?

But he told himself he was going to try. After all, what was the alternative?

"To Jody," Frank said, raising his glass.

It was summer now, and Frank was having a barbecue at the house. It was the first purely social thing he had done since Jody's funeral, and he told himself it was a good thing, because it meant that he was getting on with his life. Just like people said you should. He'd gone back to work, and for the first couple of days, it had been like the funeral home all over again. Most of his co-workers at City Hall had made it a point to seek him out, whether they knew him or not, and convey their sympathies. But it was kind of funny, too, because there were a small subset of those people who had looked terrified when they'd seen Frank coming. Those people went out of their way to avoid talking to him, like he had death cooties, or something. He could only conclude that those were the people who felt sorry for him but had no idea what to say, and so they were avoiding him for fear of saying the wrong thing. He guessed he could understand that. But after a while, it got to be a bit much. Some people remarked that he could have taken more time off; that he hadn't had to come back to work so soon. But Frank disagreed. What the hell was he supposed to do at home? At least here, he could try to do something productive. After all, he had run for election with the intention of making positive changes, and it was time to start doing that. Maybe if he could accomplish a few things that made a real difference in peoples' lives, he would stop feeling so crappy about his own.

So Frank and the Winchesters were in the butcher shop now to pick out steaks for his barbecue, and this was the scene that Chuck had seen when he'd been receiving the Prophecies that day. The Prophet had been right: this particular shopping excursion hadn't really been significant in the larger scheme of things. It had been kind of like the aroma a person experiences before sampling the food. But it had had to occur. Everything Chuck had foreseen was going to come true. He had seen a woman handing a flash drive to Gail, and that had been Abigail, giving her daughter the files on Vincent's children. That project had been temporarily shelved, due to bigger concerns. And Patricia had, of course, inhaled Chuck's Grace. She had finally gone to Heaven at the time of Jody's funeral, reasoning that all of them would be on Earth. She'd opened the cabinet where the red files were kept, but the file on the Book of Life hadn't been there. Great. Just great. Where WAS it? What had they done with it? Raguel had been very agitated when she had given him her report. Did that mean that they were using the information contained in that file to find the Book? No, all it meant was that Laurel had put another couple of stacks of files on Bobby's desk, and that file had been in one of those piles. But Bobby had been preoccupied with the situation with Jody, so he had put the files in the back credenza in his office, which was locked when he wasn't there.

There had been a lot of discussion going on between Cas, Gail and Gabriel about what to do about Raguel and Patricia. Thanks to Rowena, they now knew where Raguel was, and they knew that he and Patricia were frequently together. But, so what? Gail had asked, semi-rhetorically. What were they supposed to DO with that information? They still had no idea how to kill Raguel, and now that Patricia had her Angel powers back, it would be harder to beat the both of them, if it came down to a straight fight. And what had Patricia done, really, except to escape from the mental hospital? It was Raguel who'd killed Chuck and stolen his Grace. Not that Patricia was blameless in taking it, of course. But the Archangel was the biggest threat, and they couldn't just throw Patricia into Heaven's prison because they didn't like her, could they? Wouldn't that be tantamount to mirroring what she had done to Cas, in a way? And Cas actually had committed a murder at the time. They had no evidence that Patricia was directly guilty of any crime since the decision had been made to take away her Grace and send her to the mental hospital.

Besides, they knew where the two of them were, now. If either of them went on the move, Gabriel could track them. But why should they tip their hand now, if they didn't have to? Raguel still thought he was shielded.

So Frank and the brothers were in the butcher shop, browsing for meat for the barbecue. This was the same place that Sam had come to when he and Cas had bought those bloody animal organs for Becky. She and Brian had moved out of the bunker by now, back to Becky's house. Sam had helped her to baby-proof the place, and bought her everything that she could possibly need. A part of him felt bad that his little son wouldn't be around all the time for him to feed, or just to hold. But things had become too unmanageable. After a brief respite around Jody's funeral, when everybody had tried their best to get along, tensions had risen again. Dean had wanted to get back on the road, Cas and Gail had been popping in and out at all hours of the day and night, and oddly, so had Gabriel. It was driving Dean nuts. So one day, Sam had sat Becky down and told her it would be best for everyone if she moved back to her place. He would spend as much time as he could with little Brian and give her whatever she might need for the child, but things just had to be this way. He hoped she understood.

Becky kind of had, and she kind of hadn't. But in a way, it was a relief for her, too. Sam was a sweetie-pie, of course, but the others had all been giving her and the baby strange looks. She was used to that by now from Gail and Dean, but then Gabriel and even Cas had started doing it, too. It was probably Gail, influencing the Angels to come around to her point of view. It had never ended up coming to a fight, but Becky had been on her guard. She'd had the Angel blade under the mattress of her bed in the bunker that whole time, but Gail had never come in there, which was fortunate for her. Gail never even went near the baby. Maybe on some level she could sense what Becky was thinking. But when Becky had been packing up her things to move back to the house, that Angel blade had been the first thing that had gone in her suitcase. Because Angels could pop themselves anyplace, couldn't they?

But Becky was also sad, and more than a little mad. What the hell did she have to DO to get Sam, anyway? She'd given him a son! Had any of his other, skanky, girlfriends ever done that for him? What more did he want from her? But at least she had Brian now, and because he was Sam's, Becky would always be involved in Sam's life somehow, and he in hers. And as Brian grew older, who knew? Things might still change, Becky told herself. A baby was just a hungry, pooping blob most of the time. But an older child was someone you could do stuff with. Sam could take them to the park, or bowling, or to ball games. They could sit in a family restaurant and drink milkshakes, while Brian coloured one of those kids' place mat things. Or he and Sam could do puzzles together. Becky could just picture it now. Sam and Brian, with their heads together over a simple crossword puzzle. Brian was going to be smart, just like his father. But right now, he was boring. No wonder Sam didn't want to spend any time with him.

Frank looked up at the ceiling now, where the people at the butcher shop had raw beef suspended from the ceiling, for some reason. "Geez, I want to put on a good barbecue, but I don't know if I can afford it," he told the brothers. "These steaks are a bit high for me."

Sam laughed. It was good to see Frank making jokes and trying to do normal things again. Sam couldn't even imagine how Gail's brother had been feeling. Jody had been their friend, and her death had been painful enough for them. But she had been the love of Frank's life. That was the kind of thing you never really got past. But Frank was doing his best, and Sam admired him for it.

Dean was looking up at the ceiling too, and he noticed that there were some pigs hanging there, beside the beef. "Now we're living high on the hog," he said, elbowing Frank.

But Gail's brother gave Dean an indulgent look. "Really, Winchester? That's the kind of thing I would have expected out of Rob. You're gonna have to step up your joke game, if you want to hang around with me."

Sam was staring at the organs that were on display under the counter. He and Becky had never really talked about why she had been looking up information about eating live animals that day, and he was reminded of that now. Oh, well. He guessed it was water under the bridge. Maybe she'd been reading something about the subject in one of the books from the bunker's library. They had a lot of weird stuff in that library, and she'd had a lot of free time when she'd been there.

Frank nudged Sam now, lowering his voice. "What are the chances that Becky'll let you bring Brian, without her tagging along?" he asked the younger Winchester.

Sam sighed. "Try: slim, to none. She won't let him out of her sight, most of the time."

Dean had heard. He knew Frank had been speaking quietly for his benefit, but it was pointless. This situation, stupid as it was, wasn't going to go away. But at least Becky the Bubble-Headed Bimbo was out of the bunker now. Dean didn't really feel one way or the other about Brian, which was kind of weird, in a way. He wasn't really a kootchie-kootchie-koo kind of guy, but still, he'd thought that he would have felt something for his nephew. Maybe when the kid got a bit older, Dean thought, unconsciously thinking along the same lines as Becky. When Brian was able to walk and talk, maybe Dean would be able to bond with him a little more. And it seemed like everyone but Sam pretty much felt the same way. Even Cas. Cas WAS a kootchie-kootchie-koo kind of guy, but even though their Angel friend would still help Sam get things for the baby, he didn't really rush to hold the kid or diaper him anymore. And Gail had never been warm towards Brian, either. Of course, that was probably a bit of a holdover from the way she and Dean had felt about the way the kid had come into being, in the first place. They had still never received an ounce of proof that Sam was actually Brian's father. But there didn't seem to be much point in resurrecting that old fight. If Becky was bugging Sam for a commitment, or getting a lawyer or something, then Dean would definitely insist on some kind of paternity test. But once Becky had moved out, it just hadn't seemed as important any more.

As the men were buying the meat for Frank's party, Gail and Cas were at his house, helping Liz chop vegetables and fix salads. Gabriel had volunteered to go over to Becky's house and pick her and the baby up for the barbecue.

Becky had been standing in the living room, waiting for her "ride". She had Brian ready, along with all of the other things that came with him: the diaper bag, stroller, bassinet, formula, and extra jumpers. Gee, what a pain. Who knew that such a tiny human could come with more luggage than a small airport?

She was looking around the room, wondering idly if she needed to bring anything else. And because she hadn't really been concentrating on anything in particular, an idea began to form in her mind now. But, was such a thing even possible? Well, there was only one way to find out, wasn't there? She went to the kitchen and opened the cupboard where she'd stashed Rowena's spell book. Since Sam came over so often these days, Becky had taken the book off the living room shelf and hidden it here. And just to be on the safe side, she had bought a couple of cookbooks to put in the cupboard with it, and taken the paper cover off of one of them to put around the spell book. She knew she wasn't supposed to have it. If she got caught with it, there would be a lot of questions she wouldn't be able to come up with any answers for. She should probably just have taken it back to the bunker when she'd been there, and slipped it back into the spot she'd taken it from. But something had made her hang onto it; some notion that she wasn't quite done with it yet.

Becky flipped through the book eagerly. The idea she'd had was already starting to take hold in her mind. But how on earth was she going to get away with it? The answer was simple: There was no way she could. So, if she found what she was looking for, and she wasn't even sure that such a spell existed, someone else would have to be held responsible for it. But, first things first: Was there even such a thing as an Aging spell?