AN: Here's another chapter! Longer and hopefully better written. Reviews are nice to get btw.


Chapter Two

The year of Dean's birth, the King sent his soldiers to search the country, hunting for the fallen star. The star had brought good news – the Queen, whom everyone had thought barren, was due to give birth to a prince! However, it had also heralded the dawn of a new age, and King Jonathan was terrified for both his people and his family. Not once in recorded history had a star fallen to earth, and no one knew the exact nature of what a star was made of – was it composed of rock? Fire?

Four months into the search, one patrol found the crater. The site was isolated and forgotten. Small wonder that it had taken so long to find. The flames had long since been blown out, and the ground was blackened, with patches of rock that looked almost oily and bottomless. The trees and vegetation around were completely flattened, and the sides that were facing upwards – that had been directly exposed to the landing – were scorched black, all the bark and leaves burnt.

There was no sign of a fallen star.


Not far from where Dean and Sam were growing up under the watchful eyes of 'Uncle Bobby and Aunt Karen', there was a village. Next to the village, there was a thick, dense forest. None of the villagers liked to enter the forest – it was said to be haunted, enchanted, and the only men to brave the depths of the woods were the Hunters. The Hunters were men who weren't a group, or who had an official role within the Kingdom. They were the ones who hunted the creatures, the nightmares that plagued the people of Albion and never asked for anything in return. It was the Hunters who were the only ones brave enough to go into this particular forest, and hunt what lay within.

Oh, and one other.

The villagers sometimes spoke of him, the strange man – boy, beast, creature? – who lived in the forest. His home was never found, and his exact age was unknown, but the villagers sometimes saw him – he would appear, running between the trees effortlessly, or disappearing in a flash of light. As time passed, stories of him grew. They said he lived in a hidden castle, with seven thousand windows, that fairies brought him his food, that he was studying the very depths of magic. They said his blue eyes could see right through your soul, and that he would seduce innocent young women before slitting their throats.

All of this was complete bullshit, obviously.

He only seduced men.


Dean was ten years old when he realised he wasn't quite like other boys.

It wasn't that he didn't like Jo, the brewer's daughter.

He'd just rather marry Benny, the man who lived on the outskirts of town.

He wasn't even sure he liked Benny in that way – the man was 24, after all, and slightly scary – he just knew he preferred, well.

Boys.

He struggled with this new information for several days by himself, unsure of what to do. Was it wrong? Was it bad? Eventually, Karen and Bobby realised something was wrong, and sat down their adopted son.

"What is it, Dean? You've been acting odd for days. We're worried about you," Karen said gently.

Dean squirmed.

"Would you still love me, even if I was different?" His voice came out in a whisper. Karen and Bobby looked at each other.

"Of course, sweetie. What's bugging you?"

"I don't….I don't like girls. I like boys." And Dean's bottom lip trembled, and he looked at the floor. Karen threw her arms around him.

"That's okay, Dean. You're allowed to like whoever you want, it makes absolutely no difference to us, or anyone else!"

Dean, so overjoyed that his surrogate parents didn't hate him, so wrapped up in hugging Karen back, completely missed the worried look Karen and Bobby shared over the top of his head.


It was slightly awkward with Jo, however. She was the same age as Sam, and had always made Dean perfectly aware that, were she older, she would marry him with no hesitation. It was when Dean was 14 that he decided to finally set things straight.

Well, not exactly straight considering the circumstances.

"Jo, Sammy, I wanna tell you something. This is kinda big and I don't want you guys to hate me"

"What is it, Dean?" Sam asked, eyes wide as he looked at his big brother. He'd been following Dean around his entire life, looking up to the older boy with something akin to hero worship. Sam couldn't imagine ever hating Dean, and it was with a certain amount of worry that he waited for Dean to answer.

Dean raised his head, averting his gaze from the two and staring at a patch of wood on the interior wall of the barn, where a patch of mould was forming.

"I, umm….I like men. Not women. Like, in that way."

There was a pause as the two younger children processed this new information. Sam was first to speak, while Jo looked like she might hit something.

"Why would we hate you? You're Dean"

Dean thought he might cry.

"Thanks, Sammy"

Jo spoke.

"Well, I guess our wedding plans are off," she said in a joking tone, but Dean could see that the girl was close to tears.

"Hey, Jo?" He said gently. She looked up.

"If I was ever gonna marry a girl, it would be you," he told her. She grinned.

"Yeah, but I bet you'd rather marry Nick," she teased. Dean flushed red, and just like that, everything was okay.

"Would not!"

"Would too!"

The three of them ran out the barn, laughing.


That had been on one of Dean's days off. The rest of the time, Uncle Bobby was training him. Robert Singer, after agreeing to take Dean and Sam in, had returned to his life of being a Hunter. He trained Dean to be a Hunter as well, with Adam moving away to be a Knight. Dean grew up tall, strong and muscular, well learned in the art of combat and stealth, as well as knowing all about signs, the magic of symbols, and how to research and identify different beings. Dean loved Hunting.

One thing he hated, though, was the fact that Bobby and Karen insisted on teaching him the entire history of Albion, as well as the current political state, and the names of every single different duke and clan king.

"But Sammy gets to go hang with Nick and Jo, why can't I?" he wailed.

"Because you're older."

And that was that.

The next year, when Dean was 15, the King died. He simply fell asleep and never woke up. Queen Marianne was long dead, having died of a long illness after giving her second child away into foster care. Dean wondered where the King's children were. He wondered if they were okay.

Bobby and Karen seemed to take the news personally, with Karen sobbing and Bobby wrapped up in his own grief for several days. The kingdom, meanwhile, erupted into chaos. The sons of the dead monarch were nowhere to be found, and they weren't even of age yet! The Council was in a meeting for days, taking breaks only to eat and sleep. Lower Kings, who had ruled their own portions of land under the authority of the deceased High King, travelled to the castle of Caerlon, demanding that they be the one to take the crown.

Eventually, the Council decided. The Lower Kings would continue as they had before, and until the Princes were found, the Council would act as a higher authority in their stead.

The peace was uneasy, but it worked.

And far away from Caerlon, in a home deep in a haunted forest, the man with the sky in his eyes smiled.


AN: Also, 'Albion' is an old name for England. And I'm not gonna use the Merlin TV show as an inspiration because I love it and I'm not doing a crossover and Merthur is a whole other OTP. Thanks for reading (if anyone is)!