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Birds and Impalas

Winchesters

"…and when I asked her out, chick just flat-out turned me down!"

Dean Winchester had every right to be indignant. Hell, every other guy on the face of the earth would have a right to be indignant, 'cause what the hell kind of chick does that? And most of all, it was Dean freakin' Winchester! When was the last time a girl turned him down?

Even Sam was shocked—albeit more entertained than anything else—though he just shook his head and chuckled. "Did she say why?" he asked around the penlight in his mouth as he traced the route of their next case on the map.

Dean leaned his elbow on the door, flicking his signal as he turned right. "She said her TiVo broke so she had to stay home and watch some show called Glee," he groused bitterly. Then he threw his hand up in disgust. "What in the hell is Glee anyway? Is it about ecstasy addicts?"

Sam breathed out a laugh and pulled the penlight out of his mouth. "It's about a high school show choir."

"A show choi—" Dean turned to shoot an incredulous glare at his brother, who was either oblivious or simply chose to ignore it. Aside from the fact that a girl turned down Dean Winchester to watch a TV show about a damn show choir, there were more disturbing things. "Should I be worried you know that?"

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes longsufferingly. "Glee is my life, Dean," he deadpanned. "Don't hate on the Glee."

Dean spared a glance at the road before fixing his little brother with a stare that was one part worry, one part trepidation, and about eight parts disgust. "Dude. Don't make me break out the holy water."

"It's called the Internet, dumbass," Sam sighed wearily.

Then he suddenly froze mid-eye-roll. The simple action had caused him to look up out the windshield and catch a glimpse of something flying against the full moon. At first glance, he hadn't thought much of it. It was a bird, for God's sake. It flew at night. How ominous.

…until it twisted in midair, and he got a clear view of arms and legs.

Sam lunged forward in his seat, dropping the flashlight when his head almost slammed into the dashboard as he peered up through the windshield to get a better look at the…

What the hell was that?!

Dean, on the other hand, just stared at Sam again, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Completely disregarding safety this time, he continued to gawk at his weirdo of a brother. First that Glee shit and now this?

Was this part of the slow mental deterioration that came with being Lucifer's vessel or something? Did the vessel have to be stupid in order to stroke Lucifer's vanity? How the hell did this shit work?

"Did your neck finally give out under the weight of your sideburns?!" Dean finally demanded. "What the hell is the matter with you?!"

He belatedly remembered to signal and was about to turn again when Sam suddenly cried out, "NO, KEEP GOING STRAIGHT!"

The F150 that was in the oncoming lane honked as Dean frantically swerved back onto his side of the road.

"WHAT THE HELL, SAM?!" he roared, too frazzled to punch his brother like he deserved.

"Keep straight until I tell you to turn!" Sam commanded in reply, still stretching awkwardly to peer through the windshield. "And call Castiel!"

Dean immediately realized that this wasn't the Glee-loving Sam from five seconds ago. This was the hunter. So with only a minimal amount of grumbling, Dean pulled out his phone to call down an Angel of the Lord.

Aria

As she coasted through the currents, she couldn't help but bring up the bizarrely accurate sage wisdom of someone she once knew: "The wind, young mutant, is mischievous enough to jack up one's hair should you find yourself on its bad side, but gentle enough to smooth it away from your face should you use the right angle, it is."

Viola had been so damn weird.

Aria chortled to herself as she folded her wings in just enough to execute a tight twist in midair. Viola could have been equated to a stoned Yoda who'd switched brains with a model for Anthropologie. She was as pretty as she was weird—and Viola had been gorgeous.

But then again, attractive or not, their group had pretty much been the pinnacle of weird. In more ways than one.

And following on that note, Aria was about three seconds away from nostalgically breaking out into the chorus of "Colors of the Wind" when she was rudely stopped by some nitwit who decided to sit on his horn. She glared down at the road below her to see a sleek black '67 Chevy Impala swerve away from smashing head-on into a truck.

Her mouth twitched up into a smirk—not at the almost-wreck, though that would've been pretty funny too. Paul would've pissed in his pants if he'd seen that Impala. He'd been in love with classic Chevys, and she was ninety-eight percent sure he would've landed and pretended to be a hitchhiker just to get a closer look. And maybe beat up the driver and stolen it just for the heck of it.

Aria laughed at the thought and shook her head.

She missed them. Vance, Paul, Viola, and even Ian—freaking Ian.

Then she grimaced because she realized, shit, she was that far gone—calling up Viola's borderline-psychotic lines, Paul's penchant for grand theft auto, and missing people in general.

She banked and swerved to the left, heading south. A minute later, when she glanced back down at the road below, the Impala was still there, apparently having turned left as well.

Her eyes traced the vintage car, but she wasn't smiling anymore. The fantasy image of Paul sitting in the driver's seat, grinning like an idiot shimmered and vanished to replaced with the very real image of him flapping his wings to stay aloft with a "stray" piece of shrapnel jutting out of his chest. She wished her last image of him had been his smile. Paul had a nice smile—adorable dimples, eyes that crinkled at the corners, and everything. Instead, all she could see were his furrowed eyebrows, his mouth opening and closing silently, and eyes apologetically clouded in pain as if it was his fault he was dying.

Blinking out of the memory and wishing she could crack her skull open and soak her brain in some Clorox, Aria scored her fingers through her hair. That would've definitely been a prettier picture than Paul—her brain floating in a pool of Clorox in her open skull.

He'd been the strong one.

Vance had been the leader, the brains, the strategist, the mastermind. Aria had been the scout, the tracker, the spy. Viola was the distraction—always the diversion since she had a flair for the dramatic on top of the peacock-feather wings. Ian was stealth and speed—he'd be the first wave of the attack, taking out any oblivious idiot who managed to be in the worst place at the worst time. Paul was the muscle. He'd come in like the apocalyptic spawn of a hurricane, tornado, and an earthquake. Whoever managed to survive Ian would not survive Paul.

Her eyes burned with the threat of tears, but she swallowed and gritted her teeth, errantly remembering how Vance would've strangled her if he saw tears. Bastard hated tears.

And all of a sudden, she was just too tired to keep going. Her arms were lead, and her stomach was protesting loud enough to hear over the rush over the wind. She tipped left in a forty-five-degree angle to turn around, wheeling herself back toward the abandoned farmhouse she'd passed five miles ago.

But she should've gone with her gut feeling earlier—back when it told her to take that break right when she was above that barn—because she heard the shriek of tires and glanced down to see the Impala pulling a very hasty U-turn and nearly fishtailing into the ditch.

She sighed in frustration, folded in her wings, and dropped down into the forest.

Winchesters

"TURN LEFT NOW!"

Dean managed to wrench the wheel to the left without the tires screeching and alerting the bird-thing to their pursuit. If they'd been under normal circumstances, Sam would be decked out with two black eyes and a missing tooth for his absolutely shitty navigational skills, but since they were currently chasing a goddamn bird, Dean let it fly.

Pardon the pun.

"What is it?" an irritated voice growled from the backseat, making both Winchesters jump despite the frequency of such little surprises.

His mouth twitching with an unspoken reprimand, Sam opted to get right to the point. "Look out the window."

"Trees," Castiel answered blankly. "They're oaks, I belie—"

"Up at the sky, genius!" Dean barked impatiently. "There's some sort of angel up there, flying around like freaking Icarus, man!"

"Icarus was a fictional—"

Dean's jaw twitched. "YES, THANK YOU FOR THE HISTORY LESSO—LOOK OUT THE DAMN WINDOW, CAS!"

Castiel leaned forward between the two front seats and peered up through the windshield, his mouth hanging open a little as he stretched his neck to get a better view. Both Sam and Dean instinctively leaned away awkwardly.

"It is a bird that is now turning around."

"DAMN IT!" Dean snapped, jerking the wheel to the left to pull a very loud U-turn. "DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT! That angel thing is onto us now!"

"That is not an angel."

Dean rubbed his forehead in frustration. "No kidding—what is it then?!"

The non-angel suddenly folded its wings in and practically dive-bombed into the forest.

"DAMN IT!" Dean barked, punching the steering wheel and then slowing down the car.

"It was a girl," Castiel answered, leaning back against the seat. "A girl with wings."

The Winchesters froze and then: "WHAT?!"

"I said it's a girl with—"

"We heard you," Sam interrupted bracingly. "What does that even mean? What is she exactly? A shapeshifter or…?"

"She's not any supernatural being," Castiel explained, his tone taking on a bitter edge. "She is a product of human science."

Dean actually turned at the waist to give the angel an incredulous look, and Sam had to lunge forward and grab the wheel before they smashed into a tree. "What—like some mutant?"

Castiel merely shrugged, his mouth set in a straight line. "I suppose you could call it that. She was an experiment."

"Is she evil?" Sam asked once Dean turned back to the road.

"I don't know and neither is this relevant to our current issues with the impending Apocalypse. Can I leave now?"

"No, Cas! We need to get that thing down here," Dean said. "Demon or not, we need to figure out if she's gonna be a problem."

Sam rolled down his window and craned his neck out to stare out into trees. "How are we supposed to get to her now? She's as good as gone in that forest."

"I don't know, Sam. You got any bird calls in that library of a brain of yours?" Dean snapped irritably.

"I think she's human enough to understand speech, Dean. Bird calls are probably not necessa—"

"Thank you, Cas!" Dean growled again. "You got any better ideas?"

When the question was met with complete silence, Sam twisted around to see that the backseat was empty. The brothers glanced at each other before leaning forward and squinting through the windshield as if they expected to see Castiel rise from the tops of the trees, wings unfurled with the mutant in tow.

Sam suddenly jerked back in surprise, gripping the door and the dashboard in shock. "DEAN!"

Dean slammed on the brakes, feeling another pang of guilt for the strain he'd been putting on his car all night. Castiel stood in the middle of the road in the glare of the headlights. He was braced behind a girl, pinning her arms and wings behind her back as he held her around the middle and getting a mouthful of feathers in the process.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" the girl shrieked furiously, struggling in Castiel's grip. "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! WHAT ARE YOU?!"

The celestial creature in question was struggling to keep a hold on her as she twisted around. It was almost like a choreographed dance—she'd slither out of his grip before he'd manage to grab her again, and the cycle continued.

Sam and Dean, on the other hand, gawked at the pair through the windshield. Long hair so dark it was almost black, a lean figure that screamed trained fighter, and pitch-black, red-tipped wings that almost seemed to have been dipped in blood.

"Holy shit," the brothers chorused.

As if she could hear them, her eyes zeroed in on the Winchesters, and her face shifted from surprise to cold fury.

"HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!" Castiel bellowed, craning his neck away from her wings and squeezing her tighter.

"Shit, shit, shit," Dean hissed as he and Sam simultaneously jumped out of the car to point their guns at the girl—woman—she-bird—whatever.

She didn't miss a beat. Her struggles ceased only to bend a leg up and kick it back, snapping Castiel's leg into an awkward angle. His grip slackened in pain, and she punched him in the throat, the chest, the gut, and then the balls in quick succession. When he doubled over, she grabbed his head in both her hands and then rammed her knee into his face.

Stunned and groaning in pain, the angel dropped to the asphalt. The girl turned her fury to the Winchesters, giving them a disdainful once-over, unfazed by the fact that they were pointing .45's at her. In fact, it looked like it kinda pissed her off.

"Who are you?!" Dean barked, finally breaking the silence.

Castiel groaned, and the girl didn't even look as she kicked him in the ribs again. Her eyes were adamantly fixed on the brothers.

"Hey, enough with the kicking!" Dean growled, taking a step toward her.

As soon as his foot hit the ground, her wings snapped out—all twenty feet of midnight-black feathers. Falling into a crouch that would send her straight up, she gave them one last sneer before a low, gravelly voice broke the tense silence.

"You'll be flying against an Angel of the Lord. I suggest you stay down."

She spun around and took a step back in shock. Somehow going from bloodied-up on the ground to bloodlessly-rumpled and vertical, Castiel swiftly reached up to press two fingers against her forehead, and she sagged, eyes rolling up to the back of her head. He caught her before she hit the ground, wings hanging limply behind her.

He looked up at Sam and Dean, who finally lowered their firearms. "I think it would be wise to take her to a motel now."