#and honestly fuck anyone who says cas isn't important or isn't a third lead

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Balanced

We’ve talked about this a little before, but after talking with @7faerielights this morning, I just wanna bring this up again:

Team Free Will really is an all-out team, and if they are unbalanced, they fail.

This coincides with some discussion with @bluestar86 as well on this post. 

We, as a Fandom, have been talking about the loud, empty space made by a lack of Cas in 15x04 and 15x04 and how we were shown in Sam’s visions that without him, things take a horrible turn. 

I want to also just bring up again that it works in the reverse as well.

This is a tale of two different AU Cas figures, both of whom do not have Sam and Dean in their lives:

The first ‘AU’ Cas we saw was in Endverse. The question arose this morning on how that had a tragic ending to it, but all three members of TFW were there. What more, we saw a variation of that same ending in these Season 15 visions. Cas wasn’t present in the visions but he was there in Endverse. 

So what gives? Why wasn’t he a catalyst in that and changed the outcome?

As mentioned in the post with @bluestar86, Dean and Sam act like kind of an anchor for the choices and Free Will that Cas is inclined to have. Without them, he keeps wandering around. He still has that inclination to make choices but nothing is tethering him to said choices. He is still a wonky Angel, but has no where to go with it. 

In Endverse, there were no Angels to put him back in place anymore. 

In ApocalypseAU, there were Angels to put him back in place. 

So, let’s continue with Endverse --

Endverse still had him showing up, had him rescue Dean from Hell and had Cas attached to the brothers. What happened was that Dean and Sam split from each other, causing the first imbalance to the team. 

Said imbalance hardened Dean to a shell of his former self, and Sam said yes to Lucifer. Now, Cas no longer had his anchors. So, he became despondent. He was broken in a different way, and thus was only just another person there. 

It’s also worth noting, the term “Team Free Will” wasn’t coined at that time, coming later in 5x13 “The Song Remains the Same”. 

So, there was no one to enact change. 

Now, let’s head on over to ApocalypseAU where Cas was -- horrible like Jesus Christ they really broke him. 

He was a torturer, completely unlike how we know him now, and honestly was a completely different character. 

This Cas still had the inclination to swim against the current, but in this world, the Angels won and the Angels were unchecked in hauling Cas back to be brainwashed further into, quite frankly, insanity. 

In this world, Sam and Dean did not exist at all. So, he didn’t have even a fraction of an anchor like he did in Endverse, he just didn’t have anyone in general. He had no one to rescue, no one to have him choose to rebel, no one to hang on to when Heaven was pulling him back. 

In our world (Overworld I’ll call it), remember the crypt scene? Naomi had been working Cas for a while at that point, and he easily killed thousands of other Dean’s and she was very much getting to him, causing him to act. BUT. His anchor, the real one, brought him back down out of Heaven and thus Cas stopped what he was doing, and that Angelic pull was broken. 

Right now, as of 15x05, their dynamic is still broken which will very easily lead us to a horrible, terrible ending with murder-suicide as played out in 15x05 with them werewolf bros (I loved the one in the sweater. I was sad.)

If the relationship with Cas isn’t mended, then they are all basically doomed. They do need each other, each one. Not in the unhealthy, toxic, co-dependency way but in a balanced, harmonious way. 

Related: More stuff on 15x05 and how it was a call back to the first time Cas ripped up Chuck’s planned ending

Any thoughts to add? Please do!