In theory, Becky knew better than to go out on her own after dark, park her car three blocks away, and forget her anti-possession amulet in her Miata's cup-holder. In practice, however, Ben was staying over at a friend's house for the night, Lisa hadn't yet come home from teaching her kickboxing class at the rec center, and after Dean's foul mood and abrupt departure from their Christmas celebration, Becky hadn't felt like calling Sam to come escort her out was the best idea. She'd just had a craving for tomatoes and the spinach pies that they sold at her favorite market in Cicero's so-called "downtown" area, and she'd needed them now; it wasn't as though she was trying to infiltrate some government office, or go rock climbing, or do anything else to upset the baby she carried with her. And, besides, demons had other things to do than stalk her.

While this was all very true, it was also a fact that there were more demons than Becky had counted on.

Shouting a goodbye to Mister Atkinson behind the counter, Becky slipped out into the streetlamp-illuminated evening. With a broad grin on her face, she beamed up at the full moon and started the walk back to where she'd parked her car, over on Maple Street. This hadn't been such a bad idea, really, she thought to herself, smile growing as the navigated the sidewalks and the salt thereon. (For all she had to be careful not to get it in the house, she could at least be grateful for the fact that there wasn't any more black ice to deal with.) She walked past Cherry Street without incident, and Willow passed in a similarly uninteresting fashion; had her thoughts strayed beyond her own musings she might have noticed the black coated figure trailing after her, but instead, Becky allowed herself to get wrapped up in pondering what to make for dinner the next night.

As she rounded the corner of Main and Maple, Becky continued not to notice the person behind her — but she did feel the sudden drop in temperature that made the alley feel more like a meat locker. That could have meant plenty of things, she knew from reading Chuck's books, but whether it meant ghosts, or demons, or something else, Becky couldn't be sure. Her back and shoulders tensed and her next steps were slow and measured. A woman dropped off a fire escape in front of her — Becky's screamed echoed through the alley like breaking glass and nails scraping down a chalkboard — she stumbled back into the hold of the figure in the black coat. He grabbed her around her upper arms. Her bags clattered to the ground and, though she tried to worm out of his grip, this only made her feet slide out from under her.

"Well, won't you look at this, Stephen?" the woman purred, sauntering into the nearest beam of lamplight. Her chestnut hair was cut in a fashionable bob, and when she looked up at Becky, she showed her black eyes. Demons, then — Becky shivered, and gulped. This was decidedly Not Good. "We caught ourselves a Virgin Bitch…" With a pensive hum, she closed the distance between herself and Becky, sliding a thigh between Becky's and running the backs of her fingers down Becky's cheek. Their touch was like ice cubes coated in oil. "Christ Bearers shouldn't be out by themselves after dark, little girl. You could get in a whole lot of trouble — you're just lucky we found you and not someone with… untoward intentions."

"My companion is exactly right," said the man (Stephen; no doubt, also a demon). "You could've found yourself in the path of a werewolf tonight, missy, and then where would we be? …Petra? Where would we be if she'd gotten in the way of a werewolf on a night like this?"

"Why, we'd have ourselves one mutilated Christ Bitch," Petra replied with an off-kilter smirk. "And then we wouldn't see our Lord and Master ever again. …And wouldn't that be such a tragedy?"

"You guys obviously have no idea what you're talking about," Becky snapped, trying to get her feet on the ground again and wriggling in Stephen's hold. "Lucifer's not your God. You can raise him again, but all he's going to do is kill you! He thinks you're basically trash!"

"Oh, isn't that sweet, Stephen? She thinks that she knows anything about Lucifer just because that's a holy spawn in her womb."

"I do know things about Lucifer!" Becky protested, righteous indignation flaring up inside her like fireworks. "My baby's father was a prophet, and I was there while he was writing the Winchester gospels, and I know things about Lucifer, okay? Real things! Like how he just sees you all as dirty means to an end, and—"

Petra's hand hit Becky clear across the face, leaving a bright red print on her cheek. "You shut your mouth about Lucifer, Princess."

"Yes, precisely," Stephen added on, hissing and spitting like a territorial cat. "Didn't anybody ever tell you that little ladies should be seen and not heard?"

"They did, but it is so for crap." Becky rolled her eyes as she drawled her explanation to the demons. Honestly, why did they have to be so old-fashioned and not at all like Crowley and Bela? Why they didn't just get with the program was beyond Becky entirely. "Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean my opinion counts for less, and my girlfriend is a kick-boxer, and we're friends with Sam and Dean, so don't even think of trying anything to me because I might be pregnant, but they will wreck your shit, and—"

The sound of two shotguns firing cut Becky off, and stunned her enough that she didn't even think to scream. Groaning, Stephen released her and crumpled to the ground; Petra went down in a high-pitched screech — and, trumping the demons' noise-making, a quavering voice shouted a string of Latin words throughout the alley. The meatsuits convulsed as the black smoke rushed out of them — but, once it left, so did the lights in the human hosts' eyes, and the bodies just laid there, bleeding. Trembling, Becky looked up and called into the alley:

"Hello? …Mister Singer, is that you? …And even if it's not, I really appreciate you saving me, whoever you are? …Do you like marzipan?" Two sets of footsteps approached her, and Becky's nervous, darting eyes lit up when the figures entered a halo of light — one heavy-set and goateed, and the other tall and thin (and holding the book from which he'd been reading the exorcism). It had been a while since she'd seen them last, just over a year, and it had done something to them — made them harder, maybe, and definitely thinned one out some — but she never forget a face from a convention.

"D-d-don't panic, okay, ma'am?" Barnes told her, holding a hand out (and, judging from how his arm shook, he was closer to panicking than she was). "We d-don't mean t-to upset you or anything—"

Rolling his eyes, Damien chided his lover — "Amateur" — and took over, his voice swaggering on its own: "Hey, lady. You and the baby doing all right? Sorry if we startled you — hunting demons can get pretty… hairy."

"Oh, I know," Becky said brightly, crouching to pick up her bags. "Like that time when Sam and Dean had to fight one on an airplane, or when they met that demon in Ohio and Dean didn't want to kill her, or all that stuff with Ruby, or Sam drinking demon blood—"

"Wait a minute," Barnes interrupted. "Sam's drinking demon blood?" Brow knotted up, he looked down to Damien, as if asking, How am I supposed to integrate that into my LARPing?

"…Oops?" Becky said with a shrug, by way of apologizing. "I'm so sorry — I didn't mean to spoil you guys or anything, I just — I kind of forgot that not everybody's read the rest of Chuck's manuscripts, but… Sam isn't drinking demon blood anymore. It was just Ruby leading him astray. But he made it better when he and Dean saved the world from the Apocalypse."

Becky half-expected to be skewered for turning into a one-woman spoiler factory when she got excited — but, instead, Damien only tilted his head and looked her up and down. Pointing at her, he got something in his eyes that resembled recognition. "You…" he said. "You're the girl from the convention in Ohio — the one who got to hang around with Mister Edlund… What're you doing out here?"

"It's kind of a long story," Becky said, unable to help herself from sighing. "I mean, like… really long, and it's like, one minute, I'm pregnant, and the next, Lisa's having me move in with her—"

"Like Dean's Lisa?" Barnes asked. "'Best night of my life, Ben is not your son' Dean's Lisa?"

"I said it was a long story, didn't I?" When both of them nodded, Becky pointed at her car. "Anyway. My car can fit all of us… and you guys have probably been eating diner food for a while, right?" Both of them nodded again; Becky grinned. "Then why don't you come back to mine and Lisa's place? I'll make dinner."

A moment of awkward silence passed between the three of them as Barnes looked down at Damien and Damien looked up at Barnes; finally, Damien emitted a high-pitched squeal (at which Becky couldn't help raising her eyebrows). Interpreting for his boyfriend, Barnes chimed, "Oh my God, we'd only love to!"

Becky beamed at the hunters, and led them to her car.

Ever since he'd come back up to Heaven from Earth, Gabriel hadn't left the couch, stopped drinking his wine (which was potent, as he'd gotten Joshua to make it for him, and never ran out), or turned on something that didn't have Casa Erotica somewhere in the title — and, really, Barachiel had nothing against the Casa Erotica films… Well, true, he thought that the first one was rather silly, and that the second one didn't really have much of a plot, and that there was no way the lesbians in the seventh had really fallen in love with each other at a monster truck rally wherein they'd apparently been the only ladies — but besides that, the knotted up frown on his face had nothing to do with Gabriel's choice in viewing curiosities and everything to do with the fact that Gabriel looked like somebody had just run over his puppy, killed Sam Winchester (for good, this time), ripped out Gabriel's heart, stomped on it with spiked stiletto jackboots, sauteed it with mushrooms (non-hallucinogenic ones; Gabriel hated non-hallucinogenic mushrooms), and then made him eat it.

Which was to say that he looked not very well at all. (Barachiel's superiors in the third sphere had always told him that he had an over-fondness for dramatic analogies; he had no idea what they meant by that, and he also had no idea how he was supposed to avoid dramatics when Gabriel looked the way he did now.) With a sigh, the Cupid leaned down, resting his head on the archangel's shoulder and watching as the two women on the screen shared a passionate embrace. "Gaaaabey?" he inquired, a sing-song lilt creeping into his voice. "You wanna taaaaalk about it?"

Gabriel huffed. "No."

So they didn't talk about it, at least not yet. Once Barachiel protested that there was no way the redheaded lady could bend her legs like that, Gabriel grunted and shoved him off the sofa… so he'd gone to make cookies instead — sugar cookies with pink sprinkles, cut out in the shapes of unicorns and hearts. With a snap of his fingers, Gabriel made all of them look like the sexual parts of human anatomy; Barachiel whined and made a chocolate cake instead, but not without stomping back to his kitchen and causing an enormous fuss about how Gabriel didn't respect him. "We're friends, Rocky," Gabriel explained, snapping more than Barachiel liked at all. "Of course I don't respect you."

As he made his little fondant roses, Barachiel sighed and assured himself that just because Gabriel was being mean right now, and just because Dean and Castiel had shouted at each other, didn't mean that all hope was lost. Curving the sweet, sticky substance into little petals didn't really provide any of the answers for how to put matters between the bickering lovebirds right that Barachiel had wanted to glean from his choice in activity, but it did get his mind off of things when Gabriel started yelling obscenities and cat-calling the TV. And, besides, even if Gabriel insisted that he didn't respect the Cupid, Barachiel knew better. "And, besides that," he muttered to himself, placing the last rose around his circular cake's perimeter and starting work on the fondant elephant he wanted as a centerpiece. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and people like me."

(On Earth, it is a common misconception that writers, comedians, and other artistic sorts of people get inspiration from the Muses, or from inherent genius, or from character's voices talking to them. In some cases, this is true; in others, it is a sign of underlying instability; in the case of the Saturday Night Live writers responsible for Daily Affirmations with Stewart Smalley, they'd had Barachiel sitting intangibly on their shoulders and telling them what he told himself to get through the day.)

As Barachiel finished up the cake, Gabriel barked a string of curses in no fewer than seventeen languages (including Enochian and Ancient Greek); the Cupid pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. "'Oh, look at me,'" he whispered, his snide, mocking tone kept low enough that only he would hear it, "'I'm Gabriel. I ran away from home to have blood orgies with a bunch of pretty Pagan ladies and I don't believe in saving myself until I really love somebody because my big brothers are dysfunctional.'" Despite his best efforts at keeping quiet (which were half-baked and practically nonexistent to begin with), Barachiel wrinkled his nose and started tossing his head around as he got further and further invested in his sardonic character assassination — and as a consequence of this activity, his voice got louder.

"'I have a crush on someone, but I don't like to admit it because crushes are for fourteen-year-old girls and even though I don't really have a penis in my true form or identify in any way as male over archangel, I'm a male-posturing stupid-head who's so overprotective of his masculinity that only Dean Winchester makes me look secure.'" He sniffed as though fighting back a sob (or possibly as though he'd smelled something awful), and deepening his frown into a parody of itself, he set his elephant on the cake. It looked perfect, but he wasn't done yet: "I like to hop around on clouds and abuse my sparkly archangel powers to make myself up exaggerated versions of society's female beauty standard for sexual relations, but I don't love any of them because they're not real, even though I gave them feelings because I'm mean. And I eat too much candy, and I don't brush my teeth, and I watch stupid porno movies when I know that they upset my bestest friend, and I stick my nose in everybody's business and act like it should just be finebecause, screw your plans and whatever else you love, I'm Gabriel!'"

(Barachiel's superiors had also tried to talk to him about being more open and forthcoming when he disliked someone's actions and behaviors. But that, he thought, would have been unnecessarily cruel, and he rather liked having the time to himself to do things like this.)

Given the extent to which he'd already decorated the cake, Barachiel supposed that he didn't need to put anything else on it, but even so, he started making a ring of chocolate icing behind the roses. And he went on: "I'm so blind to love that I'd rather torment the lucky guy my heart's set on by sticking him in a fake TV Land and putting him in an embarrassing Herpexia commercial and killing his brother over and over and over again because love isn't for archangels unless their name is Castiel, blah, blah, blah, look at meee. I'm Gabriel.'"

For all he'd only gotten a cake out of this rant (and certainly not his best cake), Barachiel sighed and smiled an earnest, relaxed smile. There — that made him feel better.

The smile fell away, however, the instant that Barachiel brought the cake out of the kitchen. He'd expected to find Gabriel doing obscene things to himself or the television… but, instead, he found Zachariah glaring at both Cupid and archangel as though they'd just suggested rehabilitating Lucifer. (Which wasn't really a bad idea, Barachiel thought. Maybe the Devil just needed some hugs.)

"You two," Zachariah snapped, waggling his fingers between the two of them in what Barachiel found to be an effectively threatening method. While the Cupid trembled, whimpered, and let his lip quiver, Gabriel just rolled his eyes; Thor had been a much more effective menace to confront, and even if he'd been wielding Mjöllnir, Gabriel still would've found Zachariah about as terrifying as a newborn kitten. "…Would you mind curbing the attitude with me, Gabriel—"

"Yes. Terribly so."

Zachariah snapped his fingers and Gabriel doubled over as though he'd just been kicked in the stomach; Gabriel snapped his and a large watermelon crashed on Zachariah's head. The Heavenly Secretary sighed, and frowned, wiping juice, seeds, and bits of fruit out of his eyes. Figuring that it was best to try and look like he was doing something productive, Barachiel set the cake on the table in front of the sofa and toddled over to the edge of Gabriel's cloud; crouching down and peering down at the humans' realm, he focused in on Lisa Braeden and Becky Rosen's apartment, smiling once more as he saw the two ladies, Ben Braeden, the Winchesters, and Barnes and Damien sitting down to a group dinner. Domestic bliss, for the Cupid, felt like someone had put warm, pink, fuzzy puffs inside his chest, and his cheeks flushed pleasantly as that sensation tickled around inside him.

"That was quite unnecessary," Zachariah pointed out.

"So are you," Gabriel quipped, "but no one's fired your dumb ass yet."

"This is hardly the time for jokes," Zachariah retorted, far too seriously for his current state. "Castiel is exceedingly late for his and Raphael's meeting with Kali regarding—"

Gabriel spit his drink everywhere and spluttered, "They're meeting with Kali?"

"In theory — except for the part where she and Raphael have been sitting in a relatively empty section of the Australian Outback with the Antichrist Jesse for over two hours and that blue-eyed pain in my ass hasn't shown up yet." Since even before the child Antichrist had exiled himself to the island, Australia had been a mostly neutral territory. Demons liked the heat, but not their native gods; other pagan deities weren't fond of much outside of Sydney, which none of them had the time to fight over; and the angels resented it because of the number of children who prayed, asking them to explain the Ineffable Logic behind the platypus.

Logic and adhering to it were the last things on Barachiel's mind as he piped up: "Castiel's in Indiana."

Rounding on him, Gabriel and Zachariah demanded: "Excuse me?"

Beaming, Barachiel beckoned them over and narrated: "See, he just showed up at Lisa Braeden's — and Becky's, but Lisa's the one whose name is on the mortgage, and…" Seeing the impatiently arched eyebrows he got from his fellow angels, Barachiel paused, gulped, and went on: "…So Lisa didn't know him, and Dean ran into the kitchen, but Becky looks like she's just going to die from happiness — because she's read about him in the Gospels, you know? And Sam… well, he just looks really uncomfortable, poor guy. …But I think Castiel's down there to help protect Becky's baby from demons."

In unison, Gabriel and Zachariah sighed, muttering, "Son of a bitch."

Neither commented on the fact that they kept saying the same thing at the same time. That might have made it more real.

Ever since she'd all but put him in time-out, Lisa hadn't seen Dean move at all from the little corner of the living room that she'd coaxed him into while Sam and Becky got this angel guy — this Castiel — on the sofa and talking. Dean kept his shoulders hunched and his arms wrapped around his chest, occasionally scoffing or slipping up and letting his eyes flash with a jealousy that matched his deep-set frown. Although she still didn't really know who he was, Lisa thought it was a point in Castiel's favor that all he did was arch an eyebrow at Dean and keep talking. More than once, Dean jeered, all but outright voicing his disapproval for something Castiel had to say, and each time, Lisa looked over her shoulder to snap, "Dean!" at him. God, he just needed to act like some petulant child over this, didn't he? Maybe Becky (and the hunter friends she'd brought home, currently leaning against the back wall with Sam) could be excitable, but at least they were handling this maturely.

"You're aware that you are special, Rebecca," Castiel explained (refusing to call her Becky, despite her insistence that, really, it was okay with her if he did), "and that the child you carry is special—"

"Yeah, I've actually had a question about that for a while now," Dean interjected with a sneer. "If we're all God's children, then what, exactly, is so goddamn special about Jesus? Or… Samantha Deanna Joanne Winchesterette Braeden-Rosen-Shurley?"

"It's just Winchester," Becky muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes. Not that Lisa could really blame her — they and Dean had been over the fact that they hadn't settled on a name several times, and that it upset Becky when he mocked her ideas, and that, yes, Lisa would have preferred one that wasn't such a mouthful but it nevertheless upsether when he picked on Becky… but he continued not to stop.

The glare that Castiel shot Dean was ice cold. "That common misconception is just a metaphor for my Father as the Creator of this world, Dean. A Christ has literal divine parentage, special powers, and an important responsibility to help all of humanity."

"And you're here to help protect… Jesus two-point-oh from demons so she can save the world from itself?" The angel nodded. "Uh huh, because you winged dicks are so big on helping us mud monkeys — why the Hell are you really here, Cas?"

Tilting his head to one side, Castiel furrowed his brow and said, "…I told you…" (at which Becky, Barnes, and Damien simultaneously gasped and squealed. Lisa wasn't sure why in the slightest, but she supposed that it probably had to do with those atrociously written books about the Winchesters).

"Yeah, well, I'm not buying that you're here with no ulterior motive," Dean grumped.

"I hardly need an ulterior motive. The Luciferian demons are converting more and more of their brethren to their cause, and even if they don't get him out again, they will come for Rebecca and her child. That cannot be allowed to happen."

For the first time since the angel had shown up, he and Dean locked eyes, and something in the air between them seemed to crackle. "Fine," Dean acquiesced, grunting as he finally left the corner. "But if you're gonna be here, then we're gonna set some damn ground rules, understand?"

Castiel shrugged; his expression remained impassive. "As you wish."

Becky's swooning was loud enough that Ben came down from doing his homework to investigate. As much as Lisa loved having Sam and Dean as guests, and as much as she enjoyed hearing their more entertaining stories about The Hunting Life, she wished that this could just be over now.