Ester felt herself slowly returning to consciousness. Her head felt woozy and her mind muddled so she kept her eyes shut, trying to let herself adjust. Realising how she got in this state and remembering the events that had unfolded, she braced herself for the oncoming pain. It didn't come. Strange- what pain meds was she doped up on? As sensation slowly returned to Ester she became aware of a hand holding her right one. A thumb was gently stroking back and forth over her knuckles. Even in her confused state, Ester could tell that was odd. As far as she could remember the only people who cared enough to do that were dead. A sliver of hope grew in her chest- maybe things hadn't actually gone the way she perceived them. Groaning, she forced her eyes open and winced at the bright light in the room. She trailed her gaze up from her entwined hand, along the other persons arm until her eyes found theirs. They belonged to a man (probably in his thirties) with a handsome face, which currently had concern etched all over it. It took her a few seconds to realise it was the same man who had found her in the alley, clearly he had stuck to his promise of helping her. She was alive and the pain was gone, but Ester realised that she was not in a hospital room as she had presumed- this would have panicked her if she wasn't too exhausted to care.

"Please do not be alarmed," the man said softly, continuing to hold her hand. "I promise that you are safe now. What is your name?"

"E…Ester," she said hesitantly. "Who are you? What the hell happened?"

"Ester, meaning star. It is nice to finally meet you properly. As for what happened, that is rather complicated… as is who I am." The girl inclined her head slightly in an invitation for him to carry on talking. "My name is Castiel and I'm an angel of the lord." Ester waited for the punchline of the joke or for the man to start laughing. When it became apparent that neither was going to happen she felt a flicker of panic run down her spine.

"I'm not a child…"

"I never insinuated that you were, but you need to believe me and trust that I am who I say I am.

Fantastic, Ester thought, I get attacked by a group of lunatics just to be saved my some religious nutjob. "Bullshit!" she yelled, attempting to sit upright. "Angel's don't exist."

"Yes Ester they do." Castiel spoke more forcefully now, not angry, frustrated more than anything. "Here let me show you." He stood from the chair positioned beside the bed and stepped directly in front of her. Then the light began to spark and flicker and Ester saw the shadows of wings projected onto the wall behind Castiel. Trembling, Ester scurried to the top of the bed, trying to put as much distance between the two of them. She mentally cursed herself with as many profanities as she could think off. Being pursued by psychopaths with back eyes was one thing, but pissing an angel of was a whole new level of terrifying. Seeing her distress, Castiel moved forward and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, noticing how much she flinched when he did so. The teenager suddenly found a loose thread on her sleeve to be very interesting- she could feel the angel's intense stare on her. "Ester, look at me," Cas said gently. "Look at me." Slowly, the girl turned her face and deep brown eyes met the angel's blue ones. "Please understand this: you are safe and I will not hurt you. I'm not angry at your outburst- in fact your reaction was perfectly normal. In the past people have shot and stabbed me when I've met them for the first time," Castiel explained with a small smile, remembering his first encounter with Dean.

"You're an angel?" Cas nodded and took a seat on the bed next to Ester. "You're an Angel of God." Cas nodded again reassuringly. "What are you doing here? Did you find me just because I was in trouble?"

"Again it is complicated but I can try to explain." This time it was Ester's turn to nod. Suddenly though, the door burst open and two men rushed into the room.

"What's going on?" Dean announced. "We heard yelling, what's wrong?" Instinctively, Ester had grabbed hold of Castiel at the intrusion and found herself practically using him as a shield. Realising this, Ester moved in view of the two newcomers but kept her hand on the angel's back. Cas gave her a reassuring look. "It's okay. These are my friends Sam and Dean and you can trust them." He then turned to address the shorter of the men: "My apologies Dean. I had some trouble convincing Ester here of what I really am."

"Well yeah, that kind of figures." This time it was the taller man that spoke. He walked over and stretched out his hand. "Nice to meet you Ester. My name's Sam, that over there's my brother Dean," he said, nodding to the guy brooding in the corner of the room with his arms folded across his chest. Ester couldn't help but feel like the brothers were doing some good-cop, bad-cop stint like from a bad cop show. "We want to help you," Sam added. Yep, definitely procedural cop show- at least there were no sunglasses. "Ester, we know it's going to be difficult, but we need to know what happened to put you in the state that Cas found you in. Can you do that?" The teenager gave the barest of nods. The hand that was still on her shoulder ran down her arm and interlocked it with hers. For the second time today, the brothers shared a puzzled look. "I don't know who they were or why they did it," Ester began and if her English accent was a surprise for the boys, they didn't question it.

"Who's they exactly?" Dean questioned.

"The people who attacked me and killed my family."

Ester recounted the entire story to them. She explained that she'd gone down stairs after hearing a commotion to find her family lying dead on the floor. Her eyes began to sting and tears threatened to fall but she blinked them away. She would not cry in front of these men she'd just met- it was stupid, she knew she had nothing to prove to them, but she still wanted to appear strong. Cas interrupted her when she told them that the attackers seemed to have black eyes. "Demons," he growled in his deep voice, but with a look from Sam, Ester was allowed to continue. However, when she described jumping out of the window and ending up in some woodland, all three men were perplexed.

"Cas, where d'you find Ester?" Dean asked.

"Texas," he replied bluntly.

"So you jumped out of your bedroom window and magically found yourself in America? This story is getting weirder by the minute, I don't like it."

"Try living it," Ester mumbled. Taking a deep breath she continued to tell them of the chase through the woods and the subsequent attack. Throughout it all, the adolescent mainly kept her eyes fixed on her knees that she had tucked up in front of her, and she would have to take a second every now and then when her voice shook too much. When she had finished, Ester turned to look at Castiel who had wrapped his free arm around her shoulders. For some reason, she found his touch calming but she just put it down to some angel ability of sorts.

"Well done," he whispered to her. Uncomfortable at being scrutinized for so long, Ester began fidgeting and rolling up her sleeves in a nervous habit. And that's when she saw it. The intricate symbols that had been carved into her were still in place on her arms. Without the pain or gaping wounds and because her clothes were no longer damaged, she'd assumed that these had been fixed as well. "What the hell are these?" Ester demanded, her eyes darting between the three men present in the room. She felt a sudden anger flare in her chest. "I told you what happened and I want to know why it happened and why my family got butchered!"

"Of course you do," Cas murmured sympathetically. "I'll try my best to answer your questions."