Please be happy

Save yourself

Castiel utterly despised this.

The heavy white robes that consisted of six too many layers, the delicate gold circlet crafted in the shape of a flower crown resting upon his brow, the stiff and formal ceremony.

Michael was to receive him at the end of the aisle, and then grant him his "independence" as an adult. Of course, it was all a sham: if Castiel was truly an independent individual, he should damn well ought to be able to pick his own husband, right?

Of course, Michael was impervious (or blind, Castiel liked to think) to such notions. It went right over his head. He was king, and to Michael, that meant his word was law.

The only thing stopping him from making a run for it was the armed guards stationed every five feet on either side of the aisle. Who stations armed guards at a coming-of-age ceremony? Michael.

Damn Michael, Castiel thought as viciously as he could. Damn him to Hell.

And all the while, Castiel's expression remained utterly blank as he walked down the aisle, gown fanning out behind him for six feet exactly and not an inch more, nobles from kingdoms all over the land watching him with varying expressions.

He didn't have to be a Lycan to sniff out the greed, the lust, the envy, the disdain that was thick as a woollen blanket in the air. He could have choked on it if it was any more tangible, but the fact that it wasn't only made it worse. It meant having to put up with it while he walked the quarter of a mile down towards Michael, where he reclined in his stupid throne with a stupid serene expression on his stupid face that Castiel wanted to punch off.

But of course he wouldn't, because he was a Prince. And Princes didn't go around punching people, particularly not their older brothers who happened to be kings.

The walk was more painfully awkward than Castiel had anticipated, than Gabriel had warned. Of all his brothers, Gabriel was the most daring to defy Michael and his whims, blatantly disliking him and disobeying his edicts. If Gabriel had not been his brother by blood and by name, Michael would have had him executed years ago. The insufferable jester had been caught red-handed in more orgies than Castiel had fingers, and those were only the ones when he was caught.

Gabriel made it no secret that he thought Michael was stuffy, full-of-himself, arrogant prick.

That made him Castiel's favourite brother.

Of course, Gabriel was powerless in aiding Castiel's evasion from his fate, but he had tried to provide the youngest of the Novak family with some advice. He gave Castiel a lovely dagger with a pearl handle and the words "Beranusaji Elasa" carved into the blade.

It was Enochian, their lineage language. It read: save yourself.

Castiel had no doubt what Gabriel meant by that, and he kept it hidden under the folds of his robes, waiting for the right time to use it.

Meanwhile, he had to suppress the urge of using it on Michael.

Dean did not like Eden.

He'd hated it eight years ago, still hated it now, and would probably continue to hate it for the rest of his life.

His sire had brought him here once when he was sixteen, to show him the ropes of the job he would inherit when he came of age. They were hired mercenaries, willing to work if the job was morally right and it paid well.

The Winchester pack never dealt with anything the Alpha did not approve of, and where John Winchester was concerned, 'morals' was practically his spine. That made him a hard-ass of a father, and one heck of a leader. The pack trusted him irrevocably, and with their lives. Under his governance, Lawrence was a well-to-do, albeit small county.

Then Mary Winchester died, and John's grief was immeasurable. He would have followed his wife into death, if not for the fact that he had two sons to care for in her absence. But his grief meant his guard was down, and Michael knew it all too well, the son of a bitch that he was.

He invaded Lawrence, seizing all the assets it could offer. It had lasted only a day, but it had been a day of terror that etched itself into Dean's mind for years afterwards. Sammy had been too young to remember, just a little over six months old, but Dean had been the one who carried him out of the house as it was lit ablaze by one of Michael's soldiers, both of them crying and terrified. John had grabbed them both and entrusted them to Ellen Harvelle, one of his oldest friends who was with pup, and gave her the strictest orders to run and no matter what, don't look back. As Dean and Sam screamed for him to come with them, he ran back into the fray, fighting off Michael's soldiers and rescuing as many as he could.

They fled to the Borderlands, scraping a living off the rocks and enduring harsh winters. There was only a vast expanse of strange tundra, a landscape they were unfamiliar with, and years of crop failure because the plants were not suited to the soil left the pack starving. Many of them left the Winchester pack to return to Michael's rule over their former home, accepting the rebuke of the elders and the wails of the younger on their backs as they abandoned years of camaraderie for the reassurance of food in their bellies. It took years for them to eke out a living in the hard soil, to not have to worry about whether they would see tomorrow dawn, but eventually they managed. They built their territory from the ground up, toiling the earth, researching hardy perennials, rearing stolen livestock and performing raids on towns when their supplies were insufficient.

John swore revenge, and for years afterwards, he led a groups of Lycans to raid the outermost regions of Michael's kingdom, stealing necessities to sustain the pack. They relieved trade caravans of their goods, tore out the throats of any soldiers they saw, and gained themselves an unsavoury reputation.

When Dean was old and strong enough to hold his own in a sparring match against John himself (although he got the crap beaten out of him), he tagged along on the raids. And that was how he met Castiel, shivering and frightened in an apple orchard on the outskirts of Eden, glaring Dean down.

Looking back, he hadn't realised that the young boy he'd stretched out his hand to was the Prince of Eden, the youngest brother of the man his father had sworn to kill. Maybe if he'd known, he wouldn't have helped. Maybe he wouldn't have spent the next eight years trying to find him in seedy bars and the most unlikely of places. Maybe he wouldn't be back in Eden, on his way to the palace, blithely ignoring the suspicious glares of the townsfolk as they regarded his dusty, scuffed appearance while they themselves were clad in outrageous finery for a ceremony that they would most likely be barred from attending.

He hefted the strap of his rucksack higher up his shoulder, smile growing ever wider in anticipation as he neared the palace's chapel, knowing that every step he took now brought him nearer to the one he'd loved for eight years, and would love for all the years to come.

If only fate would allow it, and Dean prayed like he never had before that it would.

Notes:

Okay the ending of this chapter was kind of shitty and it was terribly short... but THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL BE MORE ON THE CEREMONY AND THE TOURNAMENT AND HINT HINT REUNIONS