Precious
Somewhere in Sydney, Australia, Jesse Turner picks up a book. On the other side of the world Dean promptly turns into a swallow and Sam is far from happy. Oneshot.
Jesse Turner, aka the antichrist, is a pretty intriguing character, in my opinion, and one of the supporting players that is worth being revisited, but to date he's only ever appeared in one episode. Still, with his super-awesome powers of projection he makes for an interesting plot-starter in fanfics, and I've given it a shot here. For the sake of the story it's established that Jesse did relocate to Australia and presumably took up with a foster family.
The title is taken from the Depeche Mode song of the same name. Timeline is somewhere between Ep05.10 (Abandon All Hope) and Ep05.11 (Sam, Interrupted), so spoilers for up 'til then (and possibly a tiny, tiny one for Ep05.22, Swan Song). This story reads better if you're familiar with the story of the Happy Prince. Instead of my usual crass humor I decided to dial it back and make a somewhat cute story – hopefully you enjoy.
Supernatural is not mine. 'The Happy Prince' was written by Oscar Wilde and published in 1888. Tried to make this story family-friendly (as my humor allows) but rated it K+ just in case.
Jesse Turner looked at the list in front of him. His English teacher had assigned mandatory reading in the form of a few short stories – four, to be exact – over the two-week holiday, but he had neglected to get to them until the last few days just because… well, because. He was a kid. And procrastination was easy to do.
And it didn't help when your little foster sister kept pestering you to play with her. Jesse had never had a sibling, but he decided that he liked being Gracie's big brother. And so he had given in.
Of course that meant he would need to cram in his homework over the course of four nights. Jesse sighed, decided that he might as well start, and flopped onto his bed, the open book in front of him. And he began to read: "'High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince…'"
-'χαμόγελο'-
Dean was panicking. He wasn't normally one for panicking, even in his line of work. However when he woke up to find that he had apparently shrunk to approximately a twentieth of his size and his arms had been replaced with feathery wings he decided this was a special case.
Dean half-flew, half-hopped (and nowhere in the course of his life did he ever think he would do either of those in the span of ten seconds) over to where a mirror hung over the dresser in the motel room and studied himself. "I'm a freakin' bird," he said, or more likely chirped, and the only thing that kept him from groaning was that birds didn't have the vocal chords to make those sounds.
He suddenly thought about Sam and whirled around to see that the other single bed in the room was empty. That was a cause for more panicking. With a burst of energy Dean flapped his wings – dear Lord, WINGS – and flew out of their open window.
Dean had been flying for about two minutes or so, looking about for any sign of his younger brother, when he realized that he was FLYING. Despite his severe aerophobia he found he actually didn't mind being in the air as long as he was in control. He minded the fact that he was a tiny, tiny bird a whole lot, but for the moment he figured it could wait until he had found Sam.
So Dean kept on flying and looking. He kept it up for about half an hour and when he tired he finally decided to take a break between the legs of a large statue in the park. Once again he found that he could not sigh, and so decided to make up for it by swearing. "GodDAMNIT, Sam, where in the hell are you?"
"Dean?"
Dean jumped, startled. "Sam?"
"Where are you?" Sam's voice, which was coming from somewhere way above Dean's head, asked worriedly. "I can hear you, but I can't see you."
Dean craned his little bird neck up, got a feeling of dread in his tiny bird stomach (so much for that bacon cheeseburger he was hoping to have later on) and flew up to land on the statue's shoulder. "Sam, I can't believe I'm asking this, but are you a statue?"
"Are you a bird?" Sam's voice retorted, coming from deep within the statue.
"Dude, what the hell happened to us?" Dean wondered. "You're a piece of rock, and I have a beak."
"You're chirping."
"Shut up," Dean said. "So, what do you think? Witches? Gods? The Trickster?"
"You mean Gabriel?"
"He did turn you into the Impala the last time we met."
Sam didn't need to be reminded of that. And then he studied Dean curiously. "You're a swallow. A sand martin by the looks of it."
"Sammy, what have I told you about watching too much of the Animal Channel?"
Sam ignored that and said, "Dean, I think we've just been turned into the two main characters of a story – 'The Happy Prince'."
"'The Happy Prince'? Is that a coming out story or something?"
Dean noted that even though his brother was currently an inanimate rock carving he was still doing a good job of giving him one of his patented bitch-faces. "It's about a statue of a prince who befriends a swallow. I think I read it when I was eleven. What were you doing in the fifth grade?"
"You mean aside from learning how to kill rugarus? Talking to girls."
Sam ignored that jibe too. "Well if it is the Trickster, then the best thing to do for now is to play along, at least until we can figure out how to get out of all this."
"Okay, fine, so how did the story go?"
"Well the Happy Prince is sad because he sees so much suffering in the city, so he asks the swallow to take bits of him to people in need – the ruby in his sword, the sapphires that stand for his eyes, the gold flakes that cover him. I'm assuming that if we are going by the book I should have all of that."
"Right," Dean said, and in a flash he had pecked out one of the sapphires in statue Sam's face.
"OW!" Sam yelled. "What did you do that for?"
"Just hurrying this along!" Dean defended.
"The RUBY goes first, Dean, the ruby! Now I'm blind in one eye!"
"So what? You're a statue, you don't need depth perception."
Sam grumbled something at him that was decidedly un-PG so Dean chose to ignore it. "Fine, if I remember correctly the first sapphire was to go to a playwright."
"Where am I supposed to find a playwright in Seneca, Missouri?"
"Improvise, Dean!"
And so Dean did. He found a young man who was desperately holding on to a childhood dream to publish his graphic novel (which was about punk rock, ninja cat-girls who were inexplicably attached to a loser who suspiciously resembled the author) and who was currently still living in his mother's basement. He had just run out of his savings and so was resigned to finding a job, but the appearance of the sapphire saw that he would be able to scrape by another month to see if he could get the comic to take off. His mother was not happy.
And apparently neither was Sam. "That's kind of a stretch, Dean," he said when his brother told him about it.
Dean was suspiciously quiet about that, and the reason why was revealed when Sam managed to train his remaining eye to where the bird was. "Did you just crap on my shoulder?"
"No, it was already there," Dean said, obviously lying. "You're a statue, Sam, it goes with the territory."
Sam wanted to roll his eye but couldn't. "Whatever. The ruby goes to a woman struggling to support her sick son. Try to make it close, Dean."
Close, at least apparently to Dean, was a single mom with an asthmatic boy who lived in a one bedroom apartment. He left the ruby with the kid, who had been with a sitter, as apparently his mother worked as a dental hygienist by day and moonlighted as an exotic dancer at night. "They need love as well, Sammy," he defended.
Sam didn't bother to argue, instead tasking Dean with finding the recipient of the final sapphire (and letting out a yell as Dean pecked it free, leaving him completely blind) – a little girl who sold matches. A stumped Dean would have scratched his head if he had fingers, but in the end he did find a girl of about ten who was staring at a dollhouse in a display window with big eyes. After finding out that she had done so for about two straight months in a row, he dropped the sapphire at her feet. "Actually made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside," he said to his brother.
"Great," Sam said, considerably less enthusiastic now that he was anchored to one spot AND had lost his eyesight. "Can we keep this rolling along? The gold flakes go to the poor and the needy. Seeing as I can't see any more you're going to have to use your judgment. Your much better judgment, Dean."
"You're questioning me, Sammy?"
"I'm trusting you, Dean."
And so the gold flakes started to come off and Dean delivered them to those he felt needed them most: a hobo at the corner, a talented street performer, a gravedigger (this one more of a payment than anything else – he had interrupted Sam and Dean's salt and burn from the previous night and so ended up having to refill the open grave himself), an elderly woman who dropped her shopping bags and ruined her groceries, and a guy who just got fired because he punched his tool boss in the mouth.
When the last of the gold had finally been scraped off and dispensed, Dean collapsed, exhausted, at Sam's feet. "I'm pooped," he declared. "So we're done – you're naked now. What happens next? Does the story end?"
"Yeah, it ends," Sam said, and he sounded curiously uncomfortable.
"Well? How does it end?"
"It, uh, pretty much ends when the swallow dies from cold and fatigue and causes the prince's heart to break."
Dean had been nodding off but he snapped to attention at that. "Wait, what? You're telling me I have to DIE? Sam, are you serious?"
"Hey, it's not like a wrote the story—"
"How is this happy? The prince goes blind and the little bird kicks the bucket? What kind of a sadist writes these things?"
"Just because the story is called 'The Happy Prince' doesn't mean it has people dancing under sunshine and rainbows. And Oscar Wilde was hardly a sadist—"
"Well I'm not going to have it," Dean said, and he puffed himself up and prepared to take off again. "I'm going to do what we should have done in the first place and that is hunt the Trickster, or whoever or whatever bastard it is that's doing this to us. I'm going to—" Dean tried to launch himself in the air but the exhaustion took over and he ended up plummeting to the ground.
The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Sam calling his name.
-'χαμόγελο'-
"Dean… Dean!"
Dean's eyes flew open and registered Sam standing over him, shaking his shoulder. Shoulder – he had a shoulder! Dean did a quick run through just to make sure he had all his normal human body parts again and gave a sigh of relief, also noting it was a relief just to be able to sigh again.
"You okay?" Sam asked, sitting back down on his bed.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Dean said, running his fingers through his hair. Mmm, hair. "I just had the weirdest dream."
"Me too," Sam said, "I was a statue and you were a bird, and you had to fly all over town—" he stopped when he saw the wide-eyed stare that Dean was giving him. "Oh no. You mean…?"
"Yeah," Dean said, nodding, "Same here."
"Do you think it really happened?" Sam asked. When Dean shrugged, he said, "Maybe Cas would know?"
Dean was already dialing the angel's number. "Let's find out." The phone rang several times and Castiel failed to pick up. "No answer. I wonder where he went…?"
-'χαμόγελο'-
In Kripke's Hollow*, Chuck Shurley was digging through the takeout cartons in his fridge to see if there was anything even remotely edible left when he heard a flutter of wings. He nearly dropped the bag of pork dumplings in his hand as he whirled around.
In the middle of his kitchen stood Castiel. The angel seemed unsure of what he was doing in the prophet's place, his head in a classic tilt as he surveyed the area.
Finally Chuck decided to speak up. "Uh, Castiel? What, uh, what are you doing here?"
Castiel looked at him. "I don't know," he replied honestly. "I just had the urge to come here, but why I can't…" he trailed off as he put his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. His face registered a semblance of surprise and he withdrew them. Chuck looked to see that he had stone carvings of a broken heart in one and a bird – a swallow? – in the other.
"Well," Chuck murmured, even as Castiel stared at the objects in puzzlement, "Isn't that precious."
-'χαμόγελο'-
Back in the Sydney suburbs Jesse closed his book with a yawn. At least that was one story down. He looked at the next book on his list and noted that it was Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Telltale Heart'. He would tackle that one tomorrow.
End
* Chuck Shurley's address was never actually revealed in the show, it seems. Supernatural Wiki gives the location as 'Kripke's Hollow'.