Gradually the days turned into weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. The Winchesters never saw the angel pair again. Dean had made a few attempts to seek them out but this proved difficult since Sam was mortified by the thought of running into them. Dean also could not look with his father; the boys agreed to never tell their father about the creatures they witnessed. Angels were rare and highly valuable, but neither of the boys could bear the thought of such a beautiful creature trapped in a cage, alone with they're wings beating in desperate escape attempt. Their father John was a good man, but he was relentlessly concerned about money. The small family had enough to squeeze by, but he wanted more for his boys then just a petty peasant life.
Dean laid in the bed he and Sam shared with the midmorning sun streaming through the thin blinds covering his window. Sam was asleep next to him, snoring softly; John was also sleeping upstairs. It was Thursday, John's day off from the steel works and the boys break day as well. The whole house was peaceful and dopy in the early morning. Dean could hear the trees sway softly in the gale force wind through the thinning walls of his house, as he absently rubbed a black feather with his right hand. After they had freed the boy, and Sam had collected himself, the two had set on the task of collecting all the loose feathers.
"They're expensive," Dean explained to Sam. "We can sell them to an occult shop and make extra money."
The two ended up finding twelve black feathers and two that were the brown and black color of the elder brother's wings. The boys sold the feathers to an old mage that ran a second class occult shop on the fringe of the forest. Dean figured he could have gotten more if he had gone to a better regarded store in the middle of town, but the old woman asked the boys no questions as to where they got the feathers. She simply examined them making sure they were real and offered the boys thirty coins in exchange for all of the feathers. Dean was thrilled and jumped at the offer. The boys had made a weeks' worth of the father's wages in one morning.
John was delighted with the boy's money as well, buying himself a new pair of boots he desperately needed and ever growing Dean new pants that actually covered his ankles. John also took the liberty for getting Sam, a wild apple at the market so he didn't feel excluded. Sam was elated since fruit was rare in their village.
But here Dean was, lying in bed on his fifteenth birthday rubbing an expensive angel feather not even Sammy knew he had. Dean had found it during one of his rare trips into the woods alone. It was his father's rule that neither of the boys were to go out there alone. They had to be with him, another adult, or at the very least each other. But Dean chose to defy that rule a week after John had spent him and Sam's extra cash.
Late in the night, hours after the sun had set Dean hiked through the woods with nothing but a small pack on his shoulders and his hunting knife. He wondered in the semidarkness of a half-moon night until he reached the hill top where he and Sam had seen the angels. He slung the pack off his shoulders and produced his father's old boots, his out grown pants and one of Sammy's thread bear canvas satchels he no longer used. Dean arranged the gifts neatly on the ground, pulling a clump of dry leaves together so they wouldn't sit on the muddy earth. He put the boots down first then placed the folded trousers on top of them and topping the pile with the canvas bag. Dean stared at his ragtag pile of gifts and wondered for a moment why he was ever offering them. He thought about how poor his family was and how he was just giving away items they could sell or reuse, but the memory of trapped boy pushed all those thoughts away. The could see, looking back, in agonizing detail how thin the boy was, how deep the bags under his eyes were, even his older brother didn't look so fierce any more. In Dean's replayed memories he was about to see past the terror he felt and truly see the pair was struggling.
I'm leaving these, Dean had thought, because they need them even more than I do.
The next morning when Sam and Dean were making their rounds Dean noticed something had taken all his gifts, except his father's shoes. He trotted over and picked up the shoes recognizing something had taken the time to remove the laces. Dean smiled knowing it couldn't have been an animal that took the laces. He looked inside one of the shoes to see a long, black feather like the ones had and Sam had collected. But this one was different, it was much bigger and not broken missing pieces like it was ripped out in frenzy. Dean wondered for an awestruck moment if maybe the angel had plucked the feather out on purpose to leave for Dean.
"Dean? Sam?" The soft voice of their father called from behind the curtain that separated their room from the living room.
Snapping out of his reverie Dean shoved the feather into his small night stand before replying. "Yeah, Dad?" He tried to make his voice sound dopy with sleep like he had just woken up.
His dad peaked his head through the curtain, "Good morning, and happy birthday. Why don't you wake Sam up, I've got a surprise for you."
Dean nodded before his father left, heading in the direction of the kitchen. Dean roughly elbowed Sam in the shoulder, "Get up ya' moose," Dean chided playfully.
Sam grunted before flopping onto his side putting his back to his brother. Dean pulled Sam's pillow out from under him and smacked his brother's head with it, creating a muffled slap of the canvas pillow meeting Sam's cheek. Sam made a high pitched throaty squeal before blindly throwing out an arm looking to smack Dean. Dean rolled off the bed to escape Sam and laughed as Sam still tried to attack him.
Dean stood from his tumble and watched Sam wiggle around the bed with his awkward child's body. Sam was just beginning to go through the phases of adulthood. His hands and feet were becoming larger than the rest of his body making him clumsy. Dean though, was already half way through with his changes. He was almost as tall as his father and a good deal of his muscle mass had arrived giving him the toned body of an active hunter. This face had lost most of its childish roundness and he could shave light stubble off his face with his father's razor if he wanted.
Sam finally opened his eyes by the time Dean had slipped on his jeans and walked into the kitchen. It was small, just like every other room in their house, but it was enough to get by. Dean sat at a splintering kitchen table with chairs he had helped make while John cooked over a small wood burning stove. The smell of the burning wood had always been Dean's favorite part of cooking, aside from actually eating the food. This morning John was making leftover rabbit stew with a slice of bread and a glass of goat's milk.
"Happy birthday, big boy." John said as he placed Dean's food in front of him. "I got you something." He pulled out a knife from his inner jacket pocket.
Dean's eyes widened, it wasn't just a homemade blade of steel that broke at a shape angle and deer's antler handle like the one he had now; this was a real, professionally made knife. Dean carefully took the blade from his father's hand, it had a foraged steel blade, wicked shape on both sides though the inside edge had teeth for sawing; it was set into a polished bone handle. He traced his fingers over a handful of runes carved into the center of the steel. He had no idea what they were but they shouldn't interfere with the knife's use.
"Impressive," Sam gaped, eyes wide as he walked into the kitchen.
John smiled at his boys reactions, "Well it's Dean's big birthday so I figured he needed a big present to protect him out there all alone in the woods."
John had decided (after constant nagging from Dean when he was thirteen) that when the boys turned fifteen it marked the day they could venture out into the woods alone. The boys knew part of this was due to the fact that at fifteen they would actually be capable of helping themselves, but a much larger part was John needing time to heal from his wife's death before letting go of his stronghold on the boys.
"Oh, I got you something too!" Sam darted back into their room and reappeared with a donut shaped spool of tape.
Dean smiled at his brother's gift, "Duct tape! We haven't had any of this in years." Dean took the silver super tape, it looked to be about half gone but half was better than nothing.
"I won it in a bet," Sam proudly stated. Dean quirked an eyebrow, an invitation for Sam to tell his story. "Garth bet me I couldn't get Jess Moore to kiss me by the end of the week and I did. She kisses me right on the lips in the middle of school." Garth was Sam's oddball friend who always seemed to have tools and supplies no one else could get. Often times though he lost them to Sam when the two made bets.
Dean ruffled Sam's hair, "'At boy, Sammy!"
John smiled as he placed a bowl of food in front of Sam, "I heard there was going to be an execution this evening - if you boys wanted to go see it."
"Who are they killing?" Sam spat with food still in his mouth.
"Not who, what. I heard some farmers finally found one of the vampires that had been snatching their animals."
"Vampires? Cool." Sam's eyes gleamed with childish delight.
Dean slowly finished swallowing his food before he spoke, "I was actually hoping I could go out today, maybe mid-afternoon, and track some larger game. Possible say out overnight?"
John sat with his brows furrowed in thought for a moment before reluctantly giving his answer. "Alright, but you need more than just that damn axe of yours', take Sam's spear with you too. And it will get cold so remember your flint, and for God's sake, take your jacket for once."
Dean smiled, "Thanks dad." He got up from the table to start packing.
…
Dean started first at the creek. It's was the beginning of spring which meant the water as flowing strongly with the melting snow runoff. The ground was moist and muddy making tracking easy. Dean only had to walk a few dozen yards from the tail to find fresh hoof prints that looks to be from a large buck or a growing elk. He followed the scattered prints until they met up with what must be the rest of the herd. At this point Dean could tell it was elk he was following; the prints were all just too big to be deer. He tailed the elk, looking for prints, occasional scat, and often finding low tree branches stepped of leaves.
After hours of walking Dean sat, sweating even in the cooling evening air, on an old log to drink from his water skin. The hunter noticed the unease of the forest was soon as he sat, no birds sang, crickets stopped chirping, and even the tree limbs seemed to have ceased dancing in the wind. It felt like the rising tension of a pot about to boil over. Suddenly from the corner of his eye Dean caught a humanoid figure running impossibly fast at him. He jerked his head around in time to the person over estimate their strength and barrel into him with enough force to send both of them tumbling down the small hill behind them. The pair stopped rolling with a thump, landing Dean underneath his attacker. He looked up to see the snarling face of a woman with... with an extra row of razor sharp teeth. The woman lunged for his neck and Dean instinctively threw his right arm up against her mouth. The vampire bit down on Dean's arm, cutting through his jacket and then his skin. He cried out in pain as she began lapping up the blood from his wound, wrapping her hands against his arm to press it closer to her mouth. With his left hand, Dean awkwardly grabbed for the knife his father gave him. He knew he couldn't kill a vampire with anything except beheading, but he hoped she would at least be shocked long enough for him to get his axe. He ripped the blade from his pocket and stabbed it upwards into the female's chest. She released his arm just like he had hoped eyes wide with shock. Dean threw her to the side and rolled over to stand up, only to find his foot was trapped by the log he had been sitting on earlier. Dean moaned in frustration and looked back at his attacker, but to his shock, she was dead on the ground.
He stared at her body dumbstruck. Her eyes were glassy and her open mouth still had a thin stream of Dean's blood running down her chin. How could she be dead? He only knifed her in the chest. Dean cautiously removed the blade, he didn't want her popping back up as soon as the knife was gone, but she never stirred. He wiped the blood best as he could off the knife using his jeans as a cloth. He turned the blade over and over in his hands but it was still the same, ordinary knife he had been given this morning.
The pressing pain that was beginning to well up in his ankle reminded Dean of the log trapping him on the forest floor. He tucked the knife carefully back in his pocket before examining the log. It was old, rotted and slick with rainwater and moss. He tried wrapping his arms around it and lifting enough to slide his foot out. But the log's weight proved to be too much for Dean when his good arm had a gaping bite on it. Rolling the log off was out of the question; the angle at which it had landed on him it would shatter his foot. Dean twisted around to look for a rock to wedge under it and maybe a strong stick to create a lever.
Instead of the leafy forest floor Dean was greet with something unexpected. Planted directly behind him was a pair of pale, dirty, rugged feet. Dean slowly followed the feet up to mud splashed shins and frayed pants. His eyes continued to travel up the stranger's tattered t-shirt and landed on a beautiful set of eyes already locked on him.
Standing above Dean was the same black winged, blue eyed angel he had saved three years earlier.
