/appears out of nowhere/ yoooo i heard about the medieval AU and Alzheimer AU??? daksbhhdsa nhixxie you're going to be the end of me ;u;
/A SNIPPET GREETS YOUR FACE/
“I’m Dean.” the prince says, tall and proud, “What’s your name?”
What’s your name. No one ever asks him of his name. He has no name.
The prince—Dean—reaches out and takes him by the hand, pulling him up to his feet. “What’s your name?” he asks again, but what could he say? He never speaks. He has no name. He is nothing.
He just gazes, doe-eyed, his blue eyes attempting to speak volumes, hopefully to compensate for his lack of words.
“Do you want this?” Dean asks, recalling the stranger’s entrancement with the brightly colored roses. He reaches out, bending one at its stem, and plucks it off the bush. The erythraean thing tumbles off the fingers of a prince into the palm of a no one. This shouldn’t be. He doesn’t even have a name.
Colors disconcert and enchant him at the same time, and so when he finds a few speckles of scarlet lining the prince’s skin, he catches it like a bright-winged butterfly flitting within his sight. The cut nestles on a cheekbone, the point high and strong and beautiful on a face like his. It must be from a thorn from the bush, he thinks, and with one hand grasping the offered gift, he uneasily reaches out to brush the blood off.
There’s a blur of metal and the next sensation he feels is his arms being torn back and his body being hauled further away, the back of his feet scraping the soil like rakes. He feels rocks scratch at the skin of his heels, but he is focused on himself, the prince, and the growing distance that fills the in between.
“No.” he suddenly mutters, the thought transcending from his mind to his mouth for the first time.
“No,” he says again, slightly louder this time, “No!”
The prince is a boy, but he is to be a man. He is a child, but a future king. The command in his young voice does not falter, and not a single quiver in his steadfast resolve. Dean’s voice has deepened in anger. He has a feeling this is a voice that will grow with age, fiercer and broader and rougher.
“He’s a trespasser, my prince.”
“He’s not if a Winchester allows him in.”
“He’s a beggar, he is nothing—”
“Then he came to beg at the right place.” There’s a growl of finality in his words. The soldiers seem to recognize this as well, because the ferocious grip on his arms half-heartedly loosens.
“Go.” The men in armor trudges away, the metal against their bodies clanging noisily.
He looks down on the rose Dean plucks for him—it is ruined beyond salvation. It makes his chest hurt, his throat attacked with a twinge he could only push back by swallowing thickly. He almost cries, but too much firsts have happened today. He battles it down.
“What’s your name?” Dean asks again, a third time now.
He doesn’t look up, because his eyes are far too pained. “I don’t have one.” he mumbles, the distant feeling of speaking sending tingles onto his lips.
“Then I’ll give you one.”
He resists his shame and raises his gaze, and he finds Dean has done the same, eyes of sage green flourished towards the sky, lip bitten down in thought.
“You’re Castiel.” he finally says.
The prince wears a small smile and this is all that he sees, his attention stolen and magnetized towards the singular quirk of the lip. “And don’t listen to them. You are something. Nobody is ever nothing.”
The once nameless boy looks at the prince like he’s seen nothing like him—like he’s basking in night air and star light and the warmth of a hundred distant suns. He will remember everything in this small memory; he’ll remember the colors of the flowers and the almost wintry breeze and the feeling of the soil underneath his bare feet. He’ll remember—because this is the day Castiel gives his life to Dean.