Don't own them. Satisfied, or do you need to ask any other silly questions?
AN: A crossover with Neil Gaiman's marvellous faerietale "Stardust". Or rather, I pinched some of his ideas. Hope he doesn't mind.
Especial thanks to wild wolf free 17, who's awesome story "Felis Major" got me thinking about animal transformations, and as they're an important plot device in "Stardust", I kinda stumbled onto this.
Wrap around your dreams
Dean was having trouble remembering what state he was in. He'd been driving for hours now, ceaseless, untiring. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen a building, a human being. Fields stretched for as far as he could see on either side of the road, a black ribbon winding east into forever.
He loved it.
Freedom, that's what this was. Pure freedom. Utter joy. Something he'd never experienced before. But since Sammy had left, and Dad had started letting him go on hunts by himself, he'd grown to love these hours he spent driving along the open road with nothing but the purr of the Impala as she ate up the miles to keep him company. Currently, Fleetwood Mac was blasting out of the speakers, filling the car with Second Hand News.
… one thing I think you should know…
All in all, he was kinda pissed when a blonde girl ran out of the fields on his left and into the middle of the road in front of the Impala.
"Holy crap!"
She didn't even flinch when he slammed the brakes on with an awful screech, just stood there with her arms tightly wrapped around herself, looking shaken and stunned.
She was wearing a flimsy, long pale blue dress that just had to be a costume of some sort, because it had almost certainly gone out of fashion two hundred years ago, and her eyes were a bright blue-green. Her skin was pale, and smooth, and utterly flawless.
She was quite possibly the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen.
He got out of the car slowly. "Hey, you hurt?"
She shook her head, long silver-blonde hair falling over her thin shoulders. It seemed to shine in the dusk. Her eyes narrowed briefly as she studied him, losing that stunned look, and then widened in joy and relief.
"Oh, it's you!" she exclaimed.
Dean was absolutely positive he would've remembered meeting her, and he didn't.
"I'm sorry?"
She flushed. "No, I… of course, we haven't met."
Curiouser and curiouser.
"Can I… what are you doing out here? There're no people for miles."
For the first time, she looked distressed, her eyes filling with tears. "I fell. Over there." One slender hand waved at the fields behind her.
Now he realised her dress, made of some shimmering silk-like material, was muddy and torn at the knees, and she seemed to be trembling. With exhaustion, probably, and shock.
"OK. Well, come here. Sit down…" he took her arm gently, and led her to the Impala, sat her on the hood, knelt in front of her. Her legs were badly scraped, and bleeding.
"Do you want me to clean this up?"
She stared at him, and then dropped her gaze to her legs. "Oh! I didn't… I didn't even feel it."
"Shock," Dean explained. "Wait here." He slipped round to the back of the car and fished the first-aid kit out of the trunk.
"So where do you live?" he asked as he cleaned her wounds. She winced, biting her lip at the sting of the antiseptic in the cuts. "Anywhere," she told him.
Her legs were impossibly long and very shapely, and she was shivering. He gave her his jacket, wrapping it firmly around her shoulders. She snuggled into it gratefully.
"No home?"
"It is beyond my reach, now," she said sadly. He paused and looked up at her.
"So's mine," he said.
She reached down and pressed a hand against his jaw. "I can tell. It's in your eyes."
"That I'm a homeless drifter?" he laughed.
"That you're a wanderer," she said. "It's not quite the same thing."
"It isn't?"
She shook her head firmly, mouth twitching into a faint smile.
"I'll take your word for it," Dean told her, smiling back."So what's your name?"
She opened her mouth to reply, but then shut it again, looking thoughtful. "You know," she said, I haven't had a new name in centuries. Pick one."
"Pick one?!"
"Yes, why not?"
"Well…"
She shrugged at him. "Look," she said. "I can't go home anymore. I fell. I have to… start again. I might as well have a new name. And I can't think of anyone else I'd want to give me one."
Dean looked up at her silently. Dress and hair and pale skin that seemed to glimmer and shine in the dark… and suddenly he had it. Perfect. As was she.
"Diana," he announced. "Diana, goddess of light."
She clapped her hands in delight. "It's lovely!"
"Thank you. Mine's Dean, by the way."
"I know. I've seen you, many times."
"You've seen me?"
"Yes. With your father and brother, usually. Criss-crossing the land, forever moving, always helping strangers. But I don't know why."
Dean was beginning to feel a little confused. "How? I mean… look, who are you?"
She stared at him. "Oh dear. You don't know where you are, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
Diana stood up, rather unsteadily, and pulled him upright. "Look up. At the stars. That's it. Recognise any of them?"
Dean felt like he'd been punched in the gut. All the air whooshed out of his lungs.
"I didn't think so," Diana said softly, but then she smiled. "Oh, but you're extraordinary! Of course, I always knew that, but this… do you know how few mortals could have done what you have without even noticing?"
He just shook his head, still speechless, eyes darting up to the unfamiliar stars above him.
"Dean. I need you to think. Did you pass a wall on the road? A low stone wall?"
Dean cast his mind back over the afternoon. "I don't… wait. Yes. Yes, I did. Over an hour ago. Between two fields…"
Diana nodded briskly. "Then drive us there!" she commanded, eyes and hair and dress all sparkling in the dark, and her laughter was low and clear and danced like silver wind-chimes. He held open the passenger door for her, and helped her gather her dress into the car. She gave him a smile that made his heart miss a beat.
As he drove, they talked. She had been a dancer, she explained. With her sisters, in a slow intricate dance no others could understand, much less copy. She sang, too, she said, her eyes glinting with mischief and knowledge far older than her years.
She captivated him. It was all he could do to keep his eyes on the road. He felt as if he'd always known her, as if he could trust her with anything, tell her everything, and she'd understand. She gave off light and warmth like a small sun sitting in his car... but no. Suns were bright and loud and yellow and boisterous. Diana was pale, soft, gentle and graceful, and the mere sight of her could soothe a man's fears, put his soul to rest.
And suddenly he was telling her everything, about Mom, and Dad, and the family business, and Sammy, his little brother, his responsibility, for God's sake, even if the ungrateful selfish little brat hadn't called him in six damned months.
Diana was silent for a long time when he was done.
"Now I understand," she said at last. "You hunt the children of Hades, Dean. Creatures born of the fires of Tartarus."
"Tartarus? What happened to Lucifer, and the war in heaven, and the fallen angels?"
"There are older and more powerful things in Heaven and Earth, and Faerie, than are dreamt of in your Christian philosophy," she laughed.
"The mess you've made of that quotation. Shakespeare's spinning in his grave."
Her laugh rang out again.
It wasn't long before they reached the wall Dean had passed in the sunlight that afternoon.
"From here," Diana said, lit up by the moonlight as they stood in front of the wall to say their goodbyes, "I can find my way to where I need to be."
He looked along the wall in either direction, seeing only unending fields. The last thing he wanted to do was part from her. "Alone? Are you sure? I can come with you."
But she shook her head, firmly. "No, love. No, you can't. You have other responsibilities, first. The firechildren you hunt, they will not leave you alone. Someday soon, they will begin to hunt you back. I only wish I could help you."
He didn't notice her warning, her worried tone. He only heard one word she spoke.
"Did you say…"
Diana flushed bright red, but she didn't look away. "I told you. I've been watching you for a long time."
Her skin was warm satin under his hands, her hair like silk. His skin burned where her little hands curled around his biceps, and she tasted like rainwater and the sharp clear tang of strawberries. She was so small, so fragile, but she fit perfectly against his body. When they drew apart, she was breathing quickly, her eyes sparkling even brighter.
"I've got it," she said. "How I can help you."
"You don't owe me anything," he said, amused, tangling a hand in her hair, rubbing his thumb against her jaw.
"By my culture, I do, actually, but that's not it. What do you know about wishing on stars?" Her last words came out in a breathy whisper as he bent to kiss her neck, hands sliding under his own jacket to wrap around her, hold her close.
"That it never works," he murmured against the underside of her chin. "But…" he pulled away, and she made a little moue of protest. He kissed her briefly before continuing. "But my Mom used to say… she told me that no promise made to a star could ever be broken."
Diana smiled, delighted, and reached up on tiptoes to kiss him a third time. "Then, Dean Winchester," she said formally when she drew back, "I want you to promise me something."
"Anything," he told her, smiling.
"Promise me you'll come find me. Promise me that, someday, when your work is done, you'll come back to me."
He looked down into her shining blue-green eyes, and felt his chest tighten. "I'll find you, Diana," he said softly. "I'll come back to you, when my work is done. I promise."
They kissed a fourth time, deep and passionate and longing.
"You have to go," she whispered, disentangling herself from his arms. "You have to be across the wall before midnight."
Five to twelve. Dean glanced behind him, at those few short steps between him and the wall, and reached for her again, for one last kiss.
Then he pulled away, and got in the Impala, and drove past the wall. When he stopped the car again, got out to look at her once more, the road before him had changed completely. There was a farmhouse by the side of it, and a sign not a hundred yards away that proclaimed "Welcome to Preston, Iowa!" – the very town he was meant to be meeting Dad in.
The wall was still there, but of his Diana, he could see nothing, not the faintest shimmer of her hair in the moonlight.
… now here you go again you say you want your freedom… well who am I to keep you down…
He didn't even remember putting the tape back on.
By the time Sammy takes him to Nebraska, he's survived a knife in the chest, a fall that should have broken his neck instantly, and a Wendigo in Michigan that nearly eviscerated Caleb instead, who was at the time by far the more experienced hunter. He's not stupid, and it didn't take him all that long to understand.
So it doesn't come as much of a surprise to him, two and a half years later, that the demon can't take his soul.
"It's no longer yours to sell," she snarls, pulling her hand out of his chest, pushing him back. "But it was, when we closed the deal. How is this possible? What did you do?"
"Nothing," he tells her, sprawled on the ground at the crossroads. "My work's done, is all."