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The Line [1]

...and where to draw it.

SERIES: Destiny WORD COUNT: 7,586 SHIP: Quinn/Drifter CHARACTERS: quinn leonis (AU), cayde-6 (mentioned), the drifter, kel, luke, nyx-14, glyph

i. dead reckoning

n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.

All around her people are moving, and Quinn feels like she’s at a standstill.

The air is chilly, heralding the rapidly approaching winter season in the Last City and bringing with it a rapid shift from lighter clothes for civilians (not guardians, though—maybe it was the undeath thing, maybe they just had really well insulated armor) to heavier coats and scarves.

The regular hustle and bustle of the Tower hadn’t been impeded by the shift, guardians moving to and fro, visiting the Cryptarch with secrets uncovered out in the wilds or Banshee for a tune-up of their favorite weapons. Techs rushed from the hangar to the new Vanguard hall, carrying urgent news to Zavala and Ikora, and other civilians that helped keep things running smoothly gathering around the newly placed heat lamps or sitting at outdoor café booths while on breaks.

The shopkeepers, likewise, were busy as ever. Tess in particular seemed flustered for once with how many people were running by to purchase gloves and scarves thanks to the sudden cold snap.

Quinn tugs at the hood of her armored jacket, and thinks that maybe she needs to buy a scarf as well, but she can barely feel the cold; whether it’s from the suffocating numbness she’s been fighting for the last several weeks or her body simply not registering it after enough exposure, she has no idea.

Her head had been foggy as of late. Save for the small handful of people she regularly talks to—rather, talked to until recently—she barely sees passing faces, has a hard time recognizing voices, and by extension struggles to realize when someone was trying to get her attention. Time passes without her even noticing it.

It’s not that she wants to be so distant, but try as she might her connection to the moving world around her had snapped, leaving her adrift and dazed.

Ikora has tried to speak with her several times since her team had returned to the Tower from the Reef, Cayde’s lifeless body cradled in the arms of their team leader. Tried to bridge the unintended gap that had formed between her and the Vanguard after their return.

No one knows he’s dead. No one but her fireteam, the Vanguard, and the small group of people Ikora and Zavala trusted to keep the loss secret.

‘We can’t afford the hit to morale,’ Zavala had said, while Quinn struggled to not reach out and slap him for being colder than the weather had gotten, ‘the people are still afraid, thanks to the Red Legion assault. They need to know their Vanguard is unified and whole and keeping them safe.’

Well, the Vanguard wasn’t unified and whole, and now there’s a hole punched through her chest, growing larger and threatening to swallow her with the few people that recognized her as Cayde’s girl. ‘Why isn’t he in the tower?’ They ask her, and she has to swallow around the stone that finds its way into her throat every time, ‘The Commander said he went out scouting, but it’s been a while.’

Her tongue always feels heavy with the lie when she tells them that he’s just keeping radio silent for the safety of the people here.

And so, the activity in the Tower keeps moving, blurring around her while she finds herself losing time, wandering with no true destination or goal, from one end of the Tower to the other and sometimes getting herself lost venturing down into the still rebuilding City itself. No matter where her feet take her, she never finds a place she feels comfortable in for longer than an hour at most.

Her fireteam was in nearly the same place she was—unsure of where to direct their focus, of what to do after the fall of the Prison and the loss of the Hunter Vanguard. They’ve gone out on a few tactical strikes, done some minor system housekeeping, but they all agree nothing felt satisfying about it anymore.

But none of them were feeling the same kind of pain she was. The deep, aching loss of someone she had begun to see as her other half, someone she’d given her heart to only for it to die with him. Kel, perhaps, understood it best, and it was probably why he spent as much time as he could tracking her down in whatever remote spot she’d found to hide in and sat quietly with her just so she wasn’t completely alone.

Of course, it probably wasn’t his only reason for doing so—he also understood that right then, she didn’t want to be comforted. She wants to take her ship and haul ass back out to the Reef, to hunt down the Scorn barons and put them down, to corner the disgraced Awoken prince and plant a bullet in his skull for what he’d done.

She doesn’t want sympathy and comfort. She wants Uldren Sov dead.

She isn’t the only one, her entire team vocally expressing their desire to return to the Reef to exact retribution for the cruel, slow, and painful true death the Barons and Uldren had given Cayde.

But Uldren Sov was the crown prince of the Reef, and the City couldn’t risk a war with the Awoken, not so close on the heels of the Red Legion’s assault and takeover of the City. Nevermind that Uldren had lost his mind and gone rogue, nevermind that the Reef’s structure had crumbled after Oryx decimated their fleet and killed their Queen.

No, nevermind any of that—they still couldn’t risk it. Zavala had forbidden retaliation, told them all to focus on the safety of the City and the People they were meant to protect, and when Quinn had let him know exactly what she thought of that decision he had placed a system lock on her ship and effectively, infuriatingly, put her on house arrest.

Glyph, the ghost that had claimed her as its own a while back, materializes in the periphery of her vision. It doesn’t understand what she’s going through, not really, and because of the unique relationship between them—it hadn’t risen her from the grave, and so their light wasn’t one and the same—it couldn’t feel what she did. Regardless, it’s worried about her, and it’s made that known many times since her lockdown had begun. “You’re doing it again.” It says plainly, glowing purple ‘eye’ blinking at her and concern coloring its tinny voice.

Quinn rearranges her expression, figuring she’d probably looked something bordering the line of murderous. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask if you were.” It points out, the blue-, white-, and black-colored facets of its diamond-shaped shell flitting around in what she recognizes as agitation. “But you’re clearly not.”

No, she definitely is not, and she’s far too proud to admit it.

There’s still so much she doesn’t know about herself, but she can already feel that she doesn’t and never has handled raw emotions like this well, and she knows that sooner or later, she’s going to snap. Though her memory was so foggy, she’s pretty sure she’s never felt this bad before in her life. It was almost funny that losing Cayde was affecting her this badly when she was decently aware of losing something in the past—her home? Her family? Her purpose?—and yet whatever caused her to wake up from stasis, alone, with few memories and in a world she didn’t recognize paled in comparison.

How was her snap going to take shape, she wonders morbidly. Was a passing comment, regardless of what it was, going to be too much and send her into a violent frenzy? She’d had an infrequent nightmare of nearly beating someone to death with her bare hands, and with the way her mental state was lately she was beginning to fear it was less a nightmare and more a memory.

Was she going to throw herself off the Tower and plummet the handful of miles to the ground to her death, knowing that she, unlike her fellow guardians, couldn’t be revived? Probably not—she knew enough about herself to know that killing herself wasn’t in her playbook. Too stubborn for it.

Would she end up like Uldren? Rogue and thrown to rot in a cell, losing her mind after losing someone she loved dearly and taking it out on those she counted as allies?

She shivers at the thought.

She loves the City. Loves the Vanguard and its consultants, loves Amanda and the new addition, Hawthorne—Shaxx as well, and even Banshee, gruff and antisocial as he was, was someone she counted as a close friend.

But she feels other now.

Rather, she feels other once again—the same way she felt before Cayde had poked and prodded her into opening up and drawing her into the fold of guardians, made her feel welcome and home rather than just a strange anomaly no one could make sense of. She knows in truth it’s more likely just because she knows Cayde is gone for good and everyone else around her has no clue, but the darker parts of her heart are telling her it’s because Cayde was the first and closest tie she had to feel like she belonged here.

Traveler damn her, she needs to find something to do before she spirals further.

Heedless of the steep drop off the Tower before her, Quinn uncrosses her legs and stands, hopping down from the thick concrete railing she’d been sitting on onto the tile of the courtyard in front of the Tower’s guardian housing. To her right is the gaudy, over decorated pavilion that Executor Hideo had claimed for his faction—conveniently located right in front of the apartment block so he could pester people into supporting him.

“I swear, that last Gambit match was rigged.”

The statement catches her ear as she passes by the pavilion, and she stops; Glyph, hovering behind her shoulder as she walks, absent-mindedly bumps into her and then in a fit of embarrassed energy flits around her head before settling again.

“We almost had them,” another guardian says, voice muted and difficult to catch through the rest of the chatter around the plaza.

The first guardian that had spoken waves in the corner of her vision. “No, we had it, but it’s apparently as rigged as competitive Crucible, I guess.”

Dropping her eyes from the pinned notice on a nearby board she’d been pretending to read, she looks over at the pair of guardians, and both of them cease talking immediately, staring back at her. Glowering, really. She’s not surprised. New Monarchy supporters tended to be haughty and standoffish in her experience—a reflection of the arrogant wannabe king that ran the faction.

Rolling her shoulders, Quinn continues through the arch on her way to the main plaza.

Gambit.

It’s something she’s heard other guardians mention over the last few months, always in secret, always hushed. It was like they were trying to keep it from being widespread knowledge. She’d been wondering what it was considering it seemed to be happening under the Vanguard’s nose—definitely confirmed, now that she knew it was some type of competition.

The only guardian-versus-guardian competition in the City was the Crucible, and Shaxx hadn’t ever mentioned a match type called Gambit. Maybe it was something he was testing out before making it a part of the official Crucible lineup, but Shaxx hadn’t ever been good at keeping secrets about his pet project, and she’s sure the only playtesters he’d allow were the elite of the Crucible—those guardians that devoted their time almost exclusively to engaging in a battle royale for sport and entertainment or for training newly risen guardians. None of the guardians she had overheard speaking of it were recognizable or decorated with Crucible emblems.

She changes direction and passes directly through the bazaar without stopping.

When she reaches the Crucible pavilion in the main plaza and mentions it to Shaxx, he confirms he has no game type called Gambit and has no intention of making one at the time. He does, however, tell her that he’s overheard mention of such a gametype as well, but has no idea what it is or who might be running it. As he speaks to her his tone takes on something frustrated, and it becomes obvious that he has concerns about its existence.

It’s understandable.

Guardians fighting guardians was a subject that made almost everyone uncomfortable, the Dark Ages of warlord guardians and light-fueled massacres such a black stain on the history of humanity post-Collapse that even she knew of it and many older guardians refused to speak of it.

There was a reason the Crucible was the only accepted form of it—it was heavily regulated, every match was monitored constantly by Shaxx’s quartermaster frames whether it was professional competitive Crucible or unaired training. Certain weapons were banned because of a danger to ghosts, certain people were barred from participating (herself included) due to either skill imbalance or a demeanor that threatened participants.

So what the hell was Gambit? Why did she keep hearing about it? And why did only a small number of guardians seem to even know about it?

She can feel a fixation start to form, her mind desperately latching onto it in an effort to avoid the things that had been consuming her for weeks. She needs to know what the hell this is, a gnawing pest in her brain telling her to take the diversion while it’s in front of her. Something about it felt dangerous and she can’t put her finger on why, but she dismisses the instinct.

She hears nothing else of this secret competition throughout the Tower as she wanders, though she keeps her eyes and ears trained and focused. Glyph isn’t sure why she wants it to keep an ear out for encrypted discussions on closed channels, but it does it anyway.

She’s descending the steps to the hangar when Glyph blips in surprise, its voice in her head. ‘Hold on, I’ve got something.’ It says. ‘Someone’s ghost slipped, I caught a mention of it.’

“Who?” She asks quietly.

‘That group at the bottom of the stairs. I’m cracking their encryption now—they’re talking about putting their names in for some kind of big match and picking up bounties for extra payout.’

So, there it is. She’s not sure what exactly she’s planning, but at least she’s got something. She continues descending the stairs as though nothing had happened and steps past the group Glyph had pointed out. “Back out before one of their ghosts catches you.”

‘Already did. You want me to tag them?’

Her brow furrows. “Yeah. I’m gonna follow ‘em.”

Another blip, this time of disapproval. ‘What exactly do you plan to do?’

She shrugs as though Glyph could see it, though it probably feels the motion without the visual, and crosses the floor of the hangar, weaving around techs organizing newly delivered equipment and supplies and heading for the station Amanda had set up shop in.

She holds her breath and forces her eyes forward as she passes another one, this one decorated with maps and littered with knives and partially disassembled handguns.

A plan isn’t something she’s got the energy to come up with at that point in time—this was just a spur of the moment fixation, a way for her to do something, anything that wasn’t wallow in the light she had lost.

Amanda’s face brightens when she spots Quinn heading for her; Quinn has to stifle a brief flash of despair that she has no idea her best friend is dead. She probably shouldn’t have bothered, because she then has to bite down on a swell of indiscriminate rage instead. It wasn’t right of them to keep Cayde’s death quiet, to wait for the right time.

There was no ‘right time’ to acknowledge or deal with death, and keeping someone from grieving a loss of a loved one was despicable.

Her and Amanda strike up a conversation over a partially disassembled sparrow, talking about everything from the upcoming Festival of the Lost (her stomach twists at the thought of officially saying goodbye) to the sparrow racing league she’s in talks with Zavala to strike up again now that the City had been reclaimed.

When the group of guardians Glyph had indicated turns to leave, Quinn excuses herself and tells Amanda she’ll stop by again later, and then follows.

She keeps her distance, shadowing them as they make their way through and breaking off as they do, stopping at different shops in the main plaza and striking up her first conversations in weeks to waive suspicion should the guardians notice her. Even Banshee, for all the old exo’s memory problems, had noticed her scarcity and is surprised when she stops by and says hello.

She feels a spark of guilt about that considering she’s only using him as a means to an end for her ultimate objective.

Which…was what, exactly?

It wasn’t like she had enough authority to just shut down an illegal operation herself, and she wasn’t feeling particularly endeared to Zavala to blow the whistle to him or Ikora. Shaxx, maybe, but he had discouraged a hunt for Uldren as well, and she rules him out.

She’ll figure it out as she goes.

‘There,’ Glyph finally says as they pass a corner nestled between the corridor she had just stepped out from and an open-air restaurant with a few patrons sitting and chatting with the owner, ‘their signatures disappeared in there.’

“’Disappeared’?” She asks, making her way over to the restaurant and taking a seat. She flags down the owner for some coffee to ward off the deeper chill descending on the Tower with the falling sun while she waits.

‘Yes. It’s…’ Glyph is silent for several seconds and then lets out a stream of beeping and blips that Quinn thinks almost sounds like the ghost’s version of swearing a blue streak. If her heart wasn’t feeling so heavy, she might have found it amusing. ‘How have Ikora and Zavala not picked up on this? It’s some sort of light-cloaking field. It’s like nothing is there at all!’

Leaning back slightly as the owner sets a mug of coffee in front of her, Quinn eyes the corner and notices an alley, damn near hidden between hung banners and overgrown plants and stacked crates and supplies. Now that she’s looking closer, she can see some sort of wrought-iron gate blocking the alley itself.

How had they entered it? Usually blocked areas in the Tower required specific passcodes from one of the Vanguard’s ghosts.

She turns back to her coffee and sips at it gingerly. “Maybe it’s discreet enough they haven’t noticed.” She speculates, ignoring the strange looks she receives from the civilians sitting next to her; apparently they’re not used to guardians that speak to their ghosts when they’re intangible. “That’s probably the point.”

The group she had followed reappears shortly after initially disappearing and heads out into the plaza, then makes the turn to head back through the courtyard and main plaza.

She waits until she’s finished with her coffee a little over fifteen minutes later before heading for the alley, Glyph materializing briefly to transfer glimmer to the restaurant owner for the coffee. No one pays her any mind as she slips between the stacked crates and under draped banners and decorative string lights.

The gate she had noticed earlier is only partially closed, and there’s some sort of thin, green banner roped through the bars. Her eyes narrow at it before she ducks down under the gate and into the darkened alley beyond; an exceptionally dim running light is strung in the edge where the floor meets the wall, and it leads the way farther in, turning down a corner she can just barely see.

Against the better judgement she feels as though she lost weeks ago, she follows it.

Glyph points out when they pass into that cloaking field it had mentioned, but Quinn feels no difference in either the air or the energy around her. She wonders if the difference was because of the divide between her and her fellow guardians, or if it’s part of the field being so discreet it goes unnoticed despite being next door to the bazaar Ikora regularly spent time in for fresh air and perspective.

After turning the corner the light leads her around, it takes her a fair distance farther down before the alley begins to lighten up more; she can see another corner up ahead where a brighter light originates from. Her pace slows as she approaches it and steps cautiously into the new light.

She’s not sure what, exactly, she had been expecting, but it’s still just an alley, albeit one that was occupied. There’s stacks of crates, supplies, haphazard piles of machinery and what looks like trophies—the helmet of a Fallen captain, a scorch cannon, Cabal flak rifles, and what even looked like a dismembered Vex arm poking out of a crate settled on the floor next to a pair of booted feet.

Blinking, Quinn lifts her eyes away from the various things stashed with no apparent care for consistency and up to the man standing in the center of the organized chaos.

He’s leaning awkwardly, one gauntleted arm thrown out to one side, as though to block something he’s standing in front of. He’s watching her through narrowed eyes, though there’s a friendly smile on his face framed by a short, dark beard and scars on his jaw. His hair is short, and a dark cloth band is wrapped around his head.

Green seemed to be his favorite color, between the banner on the gate outside, the large ones draped from the ceiling behind him, and the earth-green getup he wore. His clothes reminded her of the robes warlocks wore—was he a warlock, or did he just like the style? Fur pauldrons rest on his shoulders, and the gauntlets on his forearms look as though they’d seen better days, scratched paint and what even looked like rope twined around them.

There’s a gun tucked into the thick belt around his waist, and some kind of green pendant featuring two coiled snakes dangles from a string around his neck.

Quinn meets his eyes and decides she doesn’t trust him or the easy smile still on his face. Her instincts where people were concerned were usually a dead aim, but she’s unable to pick up on anything behind a friendly demeanor that doesn’t feel quite right. At the same time, she feels like the longer they size each other up he’s flipping through her like she’s his longtime favorite library book.

He finally shifts, leaning away from whatever he had been trying to keep hidden and gesturing in her direction. “Think I recognize you, sister—you’re Cayde’s lady, aren’t you?” He asks, voice somehow both a honey-smooth twang and a gravelly rasp that slithers up her spine like ghostly cold fingers.

“Am I that recognizable?” She asks, brow furrowing. Sure, she and Cayde had never hidden how they felt about each other, especially after the fall of the City, but romantic entanglements weren’t really paid much attention to in the Tower, most guardians more preoccupied with their fight against the forces plaguing humanity.

“Ah, ol’ Drifter sees a lot. Hears a lot more. You and him? Real sweet. Shame he ain’t around anymore, gotta admit the guy deserved a bit of happy, all he’d been through.”

Her blood ices over at the statement, suspicion and distrust spiking—how did he know? How did he know when everyone else had no idea? None of the Vanguard’s inner circle would have revealed the secret, and even the resident motormouth of her fireteam wouldn’t have. “Who are you?”

Not once has his smile broken, and Quinn hates that she still can’t figure him out. Her eyes briefly follow as his hand dips into a pocket on his waist and he pulls out a coin—again, green—flipping it idly between his fingers and rolling it over his knuckles as he watches her in turn. “Call me the Drifter. A name ain’t what you’re here for, though, is it?”

The way he asks the question implies he already knows what she’s here for—despite the fact that even she doesn’t know what she’s here for. Curiosity? Distrust? That much was a given; was he the one organizing this Gambit she kept hearing about? Or was he just someone running dirt under the Vanguard’s nose? Were the guardians she had followed accomplices?

What was going on? And who was he? In the years she’d spent in the City and the Tower since waking up, she’d never once seen him, not until right now.

‘He’s a guardian.’ Glyph tells her, voice a whisper despite it speaking in her head. ‘But something feels…wrong.’

She itches to ask Glyph what it meant by that, but she doesn’t trust talking to it with this…Drifter in earshot.

Her eyes follow the coin as he continues fiddling with it, almost mesmerized by the fluid motions. He’s good with his hands, clearly. “What’s ‘gambit’?” She finally asks, unsure of what else to say. She doesn’t want to admit she has no idea why she’d chased her leads here, much less that now that she was here she’s still not sure what she intended to do about it.

His grin doesn’t falter—doesn’t his face get tired smiling all the time?—but his motions stop, the coin disappearing somewhere into his sleeve with a deft motion of his hand. “Last I checked it meant some type ‘a play to get an edge.”

A light rush of irritation rolls through her. “I didn’t ask for a definition. It’s some kind of competition I keep hearing about.”

“Shoulda specified, darlin’.” He replies easily, brushing off her aggravated tone as though it wasn’t even there. “I got no clue about any ‘gambit’. Dunno where you heard it, but I ain’t got anything to do with it.”

Her skin bristles at the use of the pet name; she hated them, and Cayde had been the only one she’d ever let use one to refer to her. She swallows down a kneejerk reaction to say as much, but the slight uptick of Drifter’s lips tells her he probably picked up on body language that spoke the same words she hadn’t said aloud. “Are you sure about that? Because I followed a few people talking about putting their names in for a big match and some payout back here.”

“Maybe they were headin’ a different way,” he mimics her, crossing his arms over his chest, and she can’t decide if it’s meant to be mocking or not. “Can’t a guy prefer workin’ away from all the noise out there?”

“Not in conspicuously dark alleys hidden behind a whole bunch of junk.”

He laughs at the sarcastic observation and nods, gesturing idly in acknowledgement. “Fair enough, fair enough. Promise, I ain’t up to anythin’ bad. Just doin’ a bit of…discreet work for the Vanguard. Cayde, specifically.”

Her eyes narrow. Ikora’s Hidden did discreet work for her, but none of them hid in dark alleys with a bunch of equipment and weaponry that looked like centuries old designs. Quinn had even spoken to a few of them working out in the open, and met with a few out in the field on assignments. Was he name-dropping Cayde just to put her at ease, since he knew her connection to him?

“Uh-huh. Is gambit a part of that ‘discreet work’?” She pours as much blatant skepticism into her words as she can—he can play games, but so can she. Question was, could she play them at his level? Cayde had taught her how to play poker, once, and this guy had one hell of a poker face. She couldn’t even begin to tell what cards he had on the table, to the point she wasn’t sure he was playing at all. “I keep hearing about it, and it doesn’t seem to be something anyone wants to—or is supposed to—talk about in the open. Why the secret?”

“Couldn’t begin to guess. But I’m gonna humor you, sister,” he says, and she feels his eyes on her back as she boldly steps around him to eye the handful of guns lined up against the wall, “say I am the guy runnin’ this ‘gambit’ business. If I’m keepin’ it close to the chest, I imagine I couldn’t go ‘round talkin’ about it with just anyone. Why’re you so interested?”

She takes a moment to admit that the guns he was holding onto looked damn nice and wonder how they handled before turning around to face him again, fighting to keep her face neutral; she’d never won a game of poker against Cayde, and he’d joked almost constantly about the fact she couldn’t hold her tells to save her life. “You know I love you wearin’ your heart on your sleeve, sunshine,” he’d say, “but you’re down a few thousand glimmer and I’m startin’ to feel bad.”

She doubts this guy would feel half as bad about playing her under the table.

No answer comes to her, both because she doesn’t trust herself to keep her cards hidden and because she still doesn’t know why she’s interested. It’s a fixation. A distraction, if only a brief one. It’s something shady, something under Zavala and Ikora’s noses.

Her eyes drop to the side and her brow furrows at the thought.

Is that what her interest is? Is she pissed off enough at Zavala forbidding her and her team from hunting Uldren to participate in and hide something unsanctioned just to spite him?

If that was the case, then why didn’t she just cut ties, hijack a ship, say damn the Vanguard and the City, and track Uldren down anyway?

Because she feels indebted to people that gave her stability while her foundation was crumbling, gave her the home she imagines she lost, long ago? Or maybe she was aware of the fact that Zavala was right—the City couldn’t afford another war so soon on the heels of the Red Legion’s, and even the smallest percentage of chance was too much to risk. She was just so lost in grief she was trying to ignore it.

She can feel the rage burning just under her skin at the thought of Uldren, feels the restlessness prickling at the edges of her senses; she needs to get it out of her system before she does something stupid.

Like punch Zavala in the nose, which she was already tempted to do.

“Lemme ask a different way: what is it you want? Money? Reputation? A good fight?”

The last option strikes a chord in her and her eyes snap back up to meet his instantly. Glyph chirps in warning, and she can feel without its input how dark her expression had gotten. How full of anger and hate her eyes were.

Does she want a fight? No. She wants Uldren fucking dead, and that want is leaving her drifting and unsure, apart from her fellow guardians, something black coiling around her mind like the snakes in this man’s pendant. She wants Uldren’s blood for taking yet something else from her after she’d already lost so much, but she can’t, and being kept from that is eating her from the inside. What she wants is a way to burn that away before it can consume her.

The longer he stares into her eyes, the wider his grin grows. “Alright, alright,” he says, voice slower and smoother than before. Seductive, almost. She wonders if it’s intentional. With a flick of his wrist, that coin he’d been fiddling with before is in his hand again, and he flips it over to her.

She catches it, turning it over in her fingers with a furrowed brow. “Is this supposed to mean something?” She asks, thumbing the emblem engraved into the coin; it was a mirror of the pendant he wore. Between it, the pendant, and the banners behind him she wonders what the significance is. Maybe just an aesthetic.

Snakes. Not very trustworthy creatures, if fables Quinn had read from pre-Collapse archives were anything to go by.

“Ha! Maybe. Your ghost should figure it out. Lookin’ forward to seein’ you again.” Is all he says with a shrug, stepping back over to his equipment in a clear dismissal.

Quinn stares at him for another moment, the smooth coin warming between her fingers. Glyph is quiet. She’s confused. Interested, off-balance, and confused all at once. What the hell had just happened? Who was this guy?

‘Drifter’ didn’t exactly give her much to work with.

She’s still standing there dumbly when he looks back over at her and grins again, both wicked and amused. Her back straightens and she immediately turns and beats a hasty retreat, that smile raking up her spine just as easily as his voice had before.

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, tacking just one more bullet onto the thus far incomprehensive list of ‘what the fuck’ that meeting had left her with.

The fresh, cold air back out in the bazaar does nothing to aid in the effort to help her decide whether or not her momentary fixation had wound up turning into a good or a bad thing. She still has no intention of blabbing to the Vanguard or their immediate confidantes, but…

She glances down at the coin in her palm again and squints at it as though it’d give her the answer, but it just shimmers in the dimming twilight innocently.

Someone walks by and she instinctively curls her fingers around it, glancing around quickly before pocketing it and heading for the apartment block. She wasn’t sure if she relished the idea of being in her team’s shared living space at the moment, but the only other option she had was Cayde’s place.

And she definitely didn’t want to be alone there.

Strangely, though usually she’d happily play the petty bitch and just try to figure out the secret to the token the Drifter had given her out in the open where she was obviously not supposed to, she’d already decided to head to her own room, lock it down, and let Glyph pick it apart away from prying eyes.

She tells herself it has little to do with the potential promise of blowing off steam and entirely to do with her wanting to know what she was getting into before blowing the whistle to…someone.

That was the root of her problems, again. She had no idea what she was doing anymore. The rest of her team was still out taking the fight to the forces that would joyfully see them all exterminated, and she couldn’t even say for sure that, should Zavala lift her house arrest, she would be wanting to do the same thing.

She’s going stir-crazy. It’s definitely not helping curb her anger.

So get a fucking day job, she thinks to herself bitterly as the door to the team apartment slides open and she steps inside.

“Hey! You’re back just in time,” Nyx greets her with a wave from across the room, standing in front of a flat screen that her ghost is hovering near. Her jaw lights flash in a pattern Quinn recognizes as cautiously warm and welcoming, and she feels her chest tighten. “I managed to dig up some old movie things from way back in the Golden Age. We were gonna watch some.”

“You dug them up?” Her ghost, Kessler, beeps at her in aggravation, his facets twirling as he worked on transferring data to the screen’s system. “Sure, take all the credit.”

Nyx lets out a soft pfft at her ghost’s crotchety response, face plates pinching into an amused scrunch. “Grouch.”

Once again, Quinn finds herself wishing she were in the kind of mood to find the banter amusing. Glyph materializes next to her and blips consolingly, but it does nothing to lift her mood.

Luke’s head and shoulders pop out from around the corner leading into the apartment’s kitchen, and he beams at her, causing her mood to drop even further conversely. “It’s gonna be so bad. I can’t wait.”

“You don’t even know what Golden Age movies were like, Luke.” Nyx responds.

“So?” He says. “They’re old.”

“You gonna say that about your music?”

“Hey! Zepplin is a classic.”

“Yeah,” Nyx replies, deliberately slow, “because it’s old.”

Exhaling through her nose and closing her eyes, Quinn tunes Luke’s indignant response out and moves past them. Halfway down the hall to her room she nearly runs face-first into Kel as he steps out of his own room, and she swears under her breath. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He says. He’s looking down at her in a very patented Kel way, intense and yet completely unreadable. If it weren’t for the fact she was used to dealing with Kel’s consistent nature of being aloof and distant and hard to read—both before and after he had started showing his face to his teammates—she’d be more irritated at her instincts once again failing to do her any favors.

He watches her for a moment, brow furrowing as he, like the Drifter before, reads her like a book. “Don’t let yourself get lost.” He says, finally.

She blinks at the statement, watching as he steps around her.

Classic Kel.

For once, his strange, distant way of showing he cared didn’t feel endearing. Instead, she just feels frustrated. She’s already lost, and all things considered he should know what she’s going through better than anyone twice over, considering how she’d heard he’d responded to Gil’s death years ago.

As she opens her door, she hears Luke protest Kel leaving the apartment without watching a movie with them. Kel mumbles something noncommittal in response, and the front door slides shut shortly thereafter. She wonders if Zavala had asked for his input again in directing the City’s hunters, as he had been doing frequently—apparently Shiro-4 had declined giving up fieldwork, no one could get in touch with Marcus Ren, and Kel was the next closest hunter with seniority in the Tower.

And Cayde hadn’t ever told Zavala and Ikora what his Dare had been, or if he’d ever even decided on one, so they had to make do.

Something dark and ugly twists her stomach at the thought. She wishes the doors weren’t automated for ghost access—she wanted to be able to slam hers shut, childish as the desire was.

She drops down onto her bed heavily and runs her fingers through her hair, digging them into her scalp until it stung, and desperately wills the despair and boiling rage at war in her chest to go away.

“Are you…sure you don’t want to watch a movie with the others?” Glyph asks her quietly, flitting down into her line of sight, the facets of its shell twisting around its center orb. It’s even more worried than it was before.

Quinn almost laughs thinking about how much more worried Glyph would be if it saw what she was like when she actually got mad; though she’s not exactly sure, herself, but she knows in her gut that ‘ugly’ was a tame way to describe what she became when truly enraged and upset. “I’m sure.” She wouldn’t be able to enjoy it anyhow, no matter how nice the thought sounded.

Glyph doesn’t respond.

She stands, reaching into her pocket to retrieve the jade coin she’d gotten from the Drifter and setting it almost gingerly on the stand next to her bed. “Think you can figure that out?” She asks, eager to shift the subject away from socialization as she steps away and reaches for the zipper of her jacket.

“Giving the ghost version of a huff, Glyph drifts over to it and its facets whirl around with activity, a probing beam of light striking the coin as it got to work. “I don’t know if there’s much to figure out,” it replies, “it’s a coin made out of a material that’s been rare ever since the Collapse.”

“Jade.”

She can feel Glyph blink up at her with surprise. “How’d you know?”

Her mouth opens to answer, motions halting as it occurs to her that she, again, isn’t sure. Seems she’s not sure of a lot these days save for wanting Uldren Sov’s head on a pike. “I…think there may have been some of it where I came from, too.” She finally says, hesitantly. Her coat slips from her shoulders and she tosses it haphazardly over the footboard of her bed.

She remembers so little of her life before waking up from stasis here. While it wasn’t exactly uncommon (and, in fact, was the norm) for guardians to not remember their first life, the particular way she woke into this world and the stark difference between her light-given abilities from her peers made it stand out a bit more. The significance of that sudden knowledge doesn’t slip past her.

She should probably tell Ikora—but that would require divulging how, exactly, she came to that little morsel of a clue, which she had no plans to do before she finally found out what the deal was with this Drifter guy.

Her ghost doesn’t say anything to that, but she can hear the thin fweem as it went back to work on the coin. She’s down to the tank top she wore under her coat and armor and her underwear before she finally hears a noise of success from her ghost.

“This is amazing,” it says, its facets flitting about wildly in excitement when she turns around and makes her way back over to take a seat on the bed, “it looks like it’s just a coin made out of a gemstone, but it’s actually a compact encryption key and transponder encased in the gemstone. All in one! Do you think he made them himself?”

She picks the coin up and stares at it, thumbing the emblem again and furrowing her brow. Gesturing idly, she shrugs her confusion and declines to offer her opinion on its question. “Which means what?”

A pause. “I, uh. I don’t know.”

This actually startles a choked laugh out of her, and the reaction results in an energized ghost. She’s sure that if Glyph were capable of it, it’d be beaming at her. “Well,” she says, “so much for ‘your ghost should figure it out’.”

“Hey! I did figure it out!”

Her eyebrow lifts.

It blinks, facets withdrawing around its core almost bashfully. “I mean, sort of. Look, the point is whatever he gave it to us for, we’ll just have to wait until we get a signal from it to find out for real.”

The coin twists and flips in her fingers as she thinks before she realizes that she’s fidgeting—at least it wasn’t braiding her hair, but she’d always hated displaying her anxieties so openly. Pursing her lips, she holds the coin out. “You should probably hang onto it, then. I won’t be able to tell when it gets one.”

“Good point.” It says, hitting the coin with another flash of light and dematting it into whatever light-fueled pocket dimension ghosts had access to. It looks at her long and hard, then, and she squints back at it. As she’s about to ask what the look was for it cuts her off. “Are you sure you want to do this? We could—we could just tell Zavala. Or Ikora. You’re still friends with Ikora, right?”

Whatever shift in her expression occurs it causes Glyph to recoil from her and she feels terrible. Her face drops to her hands and she takes a deep breath to calm herself. “Sorry,” she says. She feels like she needs to say more, but the words won’t come and so she sits there on her bed stupidly, her gaze going long and distant.

“You know, spending time with the team might be good for you.” Glyph says softly.

Silently, she agrees, but while she does want to spend time with her team, she also really doesn’t. In spite of the fact she hadn’t done much that day—meeting with the Drifter being the only moment that truly stuck out, strange a meeting as it was—she was exhausted. Glancing to her side where a clock is projected above the surface of her nightstand, she notes blankly that it’s barely past sundown.

Shifting, she settles onto her bed and pulls the covers over herself, rolling so her back is to Glyph. “You can go ahead and watch the movie if you want, Glyph. I’ll be okay.”

The room is quiet, but she eventually hears the hiss of her door opening and then clicking shut as Glyph leaves her alone with the silence.

#v: destiny #c: quinn leonis #c: luke #c: kel #c: nyx 14 #c: glyph #ch: the drifter #sh: embrace the dark #f: the line

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Text

12x19 notes

for some reason I got that old advert that’s like, “the future’s bright... the future’s Orange” stuck in my head the entire time. (I mean Orange got bought out by ee and the name vanished so... no, it’s not Orange. :P)

I blame the return of Sam’s orange jacket.

expectations - fairly muted since I read pretty much no speculation over the little break and really don't know what to make of this season in forward planning. Mittens said it best to me last night - that the show is doing quite predictable things but the layers and complexity and subversions on their own playbook are where it's interesting. So in a way it feels like we could map out what might happen in this episode? But I didn't feel like reading that because that would just make it feel predictable to the point of boredom guessing the big beats. And I'm expecting some of thing with the emotional side to be almost unpredictably messy. Like how 12x12 I don't think anyone was going into it thinking Cas was going to have a big i love you moment :P

For the actual writing, this is our potentially bizarre but wonderful combination of writers - Glynn and Berens having a crack at the Kelly stuff, and I think is the first time she's appeared outside of a Buckleming episode, while this is only the second time the Kelly stuff has even been IN a non-Buckleming episode after we saw Cas's side a bit in 12x15 before it got derailed into him going to Heaven, or 12x10 which was emotionally about it but only had mentions either side. Glynn's been huge on consent and attempting to handle things sensitively (to a varying degree of success in implementation according to the fandom, but I award points for trying...) and Berens definitely wants to be a feminist writer and also to varying degrees of acceptance by the fandom, but his heart is in the right place. I think the two of them together would hopefully bring a very different perspective to Kelly's story and this is the episode where I'm hoping they make the most of the fact this storyline is happening... Plus I'm fairly sure this is the one directed by Amanda Tapping so there's that :3

recap starts right off with what Cas has been up to this third of the season. I was starting to forget who he was. Dean is worried about the same thing. Blah blah Kelly, Dean worrying about Cas, blah blah Kelly and Dagon, Eileen being a BAMF, where's Cas is he okay, Dean has the Colt.

I've never really ranked recaps out of 10 or anything but that was a pretty good one for all the layering in how Dean's been worried about Cas in between all these other events taking place, and also making it SO CLEAR that Dean is the one who's been worried about Cas

Kelly's looking great >.> Dagon appears to have moved her to a dungeon. Lovely. She's got the worst beside manner ever.

Or it's just the basement of a horrible shack. LOOKS like a dungeon, which I think is the point.

Oh gosh Dagon is properly scary, and Kelly gets some self-reflection... Or, well, her reflection is broken by the mirror and she's just a faceless baby bump. Great shot.

Oh no Kelly no... I actually care about her now and she got to actually say some actual words about how she feels and how this has affected her, aka jumped right over my extremely low bar for her treatment that Buckleming weren't exactly straining themselves to get over, and now she's trying to kill herself. :< :< They finally let the actress DO something where the scene was about HER and not JUST her baby, and it was incredible and terrible and arrrghhhh

I hope everyone was okay after that opening because that was pretty harsh. Bobo puts suicide-related stuff in a lot of his episodes with about the reliability of Buckleming and creepy pregnancies, but there's some pretty vivid, awful suicides on screen thanks to him, and this was a long beautifully shot sequence of her bleeding out

I mean I assume she'll be fine and I was waiting for the twist before the title card where the nephilim forces her back to life, but I guess they're leaving us on that for now >.>

(This was necessary to do, though, both because Kelly's really in a place where only extreme reactions can happen to prove anything, as it's such a tense bad situation, and also SHE needed to take an action to be a remotely fleshed out character after all she's been dragged through so far, and ALSO we need to see some proof the nephilim is as bad as it is, burning bible aside, that it's just not quite enough of a real threat or presence - something everyone is talking about but with the 9 month wait for a baby to pop is very hypothetical for the intervening time - I was actually expecting her to try cutting it out of herself, or at least if I had an R rated horror version of this show I would show that >.>)

(I mean if I was in control of an R rated version of the show we would probably not have this plotline :P)

*adds Sam drawing on the table to my list of offences he's committed against the bunker*

He really has it in for that table

That was a pretty fun montage of him doing stuff and thinking on screen for us. Weird as it may be I don't get the feeling the Winchesters think a lot because they usually show us them right when they walk in having googled something or already worked it out. We get middle of episode research montages but only a couple of episodes start on reading montages and usually to show the research is futile... Actually showing Sam puzzling out the thing he was wondering about before we get Dean wandering in and Sam explaining what that was all about is... weirdly refreshing... Proof they use their brains.

He's working out when Nephilim are born, which seems to be a somehow more complicated, magical thing than simple biology, but does explain the way he was talking about it in the promo, which without the montage sounded like another boring, “so I googled it and surprisingly there was a website to work this out”, kind of explanation.

It does get boring to keep showing that, even if thinking montages take up time, they LOOK good and are better storytelling for the characters.

Wait if you guys went to prison around early december, you DID spend Christmas and maybe Dean's birthday in the lock up... Oh no :P Was that ever actually confirmed? I thought we went the other way on that when we were trying to work it out over Christmas.

CAAAAS

Cas cas cas cas cas

"Hello." That is still the term? Been away a while :P

I love Dean's face as he watches Cas come down to join them. He's just stunned to see him.

Annoyed because he's concerned

"working with the angels"

*Dean's face puckers up comically*

Cas lies to them *Dean starts to make the 6x15 pouting face* ("that's how he does it") ... I have to screencap this I've never seen Dean make such a weird face since then :P

He goes through like eight different emotions and there isn't room enough for them all on his face. He's still pouting about one thing and then Sam says they're glad Cas is back and he overloads :P

Bless Amanda Tapping for capturing that on camera.

yikes Dean, once again with the concerned and angry thing >.> Pls stop being angry at Cas because you can't handle missing him that much. Sam says they're glad Cas is back because that's what you're supposed to say and he's happy Cas is back and there's some extra help and you know sometimes Cas is here and sometimes Cas isn't but when he is he's helpful and they like each other and get on... and meanwhile Dean has burned through like 3 diaries of emo teenage sobbing about if Cas likes him and why isn't he returning his calls or texts in the last month, and he's been on a rollercoaster of angst about it all and now Cas is back it's like wtf does he even CARE i thought he said he LOVED us how can he be so heartless FML *sounds of Evanescence playing from Dean's room* *sam does not ask*

And Cas pulls that Cas face he does when Dean gets like this (I mean they were standing around the table almost like this in 8x22 when Dean ripped into Cas, and again in 11x07... Never mind how Dean was acting in 12x10 at the start where, yep, Cas comes in just like in 8x22. War room table. Where the family goes to have its wars :P)

12x10 already subverted this while we were on the middle of the season emotional development phase of the story, so we'll see how it goes here

Dean's complaints about being ditched and ignored are definitely straight from his diary

"What the hell's wrong with you, man?"

*Cas can't answer*

Dean's like, whatever, and storms off to his room

*sounds of Evanescence playing even louder while he writes a few more pages in his diary*

BMoL like "well we got some useful intel, but we need to edit so much romantic tension out of this before we can show it to the higher ups"

I suppose Cas can't answer because he's lying and for some reason or another everything sucks and what's wrong with him presumably boils down to the problem of home and family and whatever was put to him in Heaven, which I assume is directly relating to his conflict about home and family. The fact he can't answer is a very literal demonstration of him being trapped between all this and not able to answer. For whatever reason he's come back/been allowed to come back/been sent back, he is still stuck on their offer and walking into Dean throwing an almighty strop about Cas's absence and how much it's hurt him not to have Cas there... Not good for his ability to immediately answer.

[note with hindsight: okay don’t normally do this but the episode INTENTIONALLY wiped this off the slate and it’s not even a useful tangent thought. Guess this was left over what we were meant to be feeling (Kelvin asks Cas this in 12x15 after all which WAS the last word we had on it) but Cas has already made up his mind and his declaration of his motivations in this episode made this pretty obvious in hindsight that it was just what the angels THOUGHT Cas might be motivated by still but he really has gone all in with the Winchesters - of course only at the point it can get thrown away by other factors, and choices... Did have some other thoughts about Cas not being sure he belonged so a more subtle way of analysing it that Cas was realising he might not BELONG belong, but he would have to act to protect Dean from afar, and the cost of his friendship - well, Dean was ALREADY pissed at him so Cas will do what he has to >.>]

Also. Cas got all of Dean's calls. So, like, that's the same as 8x02 and "I prayed to you, every night!" "I know"

And while we're here, of course I shouldn't bring this in but what was Amanda Tapping around for during season 8, but pretty much entirely the Destiel scenes - and in this case, "you're hoping Castiel will return to you... I only wish he felt the same way" - now Cas returns and to Dean it seems like, well, he doesn't feel the same way.

Dean hides in his room. He's not listening to Evanescence. He's doing some more angry searching for Kelly or whatever. WHATEVER *pouts harder*

Cas knocks, doesn't get an answer, and comes in anyway. In 10x03 he knocks and waits until Dean invites him to come in - a much more sensitive situation where he was concerned about how Dean felt in a way where Dean was sad and fragile. He's being a bit fragile now, in a slightly more ridiculous way, but Cas is just gonna barge in now. This isn't Cas being "such an angel" about doors (re: 9x22 and Gadreel barging in on Metatron, hi Dabb) which was something we were discussing after 10x03 and how Cas had a, well, not-angelic approach to doors. Cas CHOOSES to ignore the lack of invitation and barge in anyway and when it comes to Cas and social nuances, it's always worth pointing out what he does and doesn't already know.

[edit with hindsight: also - early warning he’s violating the space by not respecting Dean’s privacy and that this WAS an intrusion. I actually didn’t remember to analyse what I thought Cas was up to here, mostly because he WAS acting shifty so I didn’t know what to trust he was doing but not enough to guess what he WOULD do :P]

Also how to know if you still ship the thing: obviously predicted the only reason they'd show Dean in his room after he stomped off alone was if Cas came for a round 2 without Sam around to make it hard to talk, and for them to chat in a more personal, less conflict-y environment. And yet as soon as I see his dumb face on my screen my heart skips.

I think this is only the second time Cas has ever come into Dean's room, officially, aside from 10x03.

...

*rewinds*

D-did Cas just... break up with Dean by giving him back the mix tape they made out to at prom or something

What the fuck

*rewinds*

"I just wanted to return this"

No okay Cas definitely just broke up with Dean by giving him back the mix tape they made out to at prom

Why though

Why would you even write this into your show

"It's a gift. You keep those."

Dean you are so broken hearted I'm gonna die

*Evanescence blaring in Dean's soul at top volume*

I'm so tired of being here Suppressed by all my childish fears And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave 'Cause your presence still lingers here And it won't leave me alone These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real There's just too much that time cannot erase When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears And I held your hand through all of these years But you still have all of me You used to captivate me by your resonating light Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real There's just too much that time cannot erase When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears And I held your hand through all of these years But you still have all of me I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone But though you're still with me, I've been alone all along When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears And I held your hand through all of these years You still have all of me, me, me

("My Immortal" - it seemed fitting :P)

Yes I remember being 16. Who doesn't regret some things.

Um I literally don't have any analysis of their interactions here because my brain shorted out and all I can think of is that this was literally the stupidest thing they've ever written if they don't think Destiel is a thing. I mean look at it.

At some point in the last say 5 years or whatever Dean's made Cas a mixtape.

And then Cas tried to give it back because Dean was a dick to him when he was upset about Cas leaving and not returning his calls.

And Dean was like fuck off it was a present because oh my god what the fuck Supernatural

I need to keep watching because I could very easily sit here yelling at the screen for the rest of the day and I only just remembered that Kelly's off dead or not in a bathtub and there's real problems here which aren't these two emo 16 year olds figuring out what a crush is in glacial slow motion.

Oh NO there's a close up on their hands as Cas takes it back. And Cas makes another noise like he might say something and he doesn't and I'm actually going to CRY with FRUSTRATION

Dean actually tries a little to explain why he's pissed from his POV without resorting to Evanescence lyrics.

"WE didn't know what had happened to you. WE were worried about you"

Dean you may have missed the recap, but uh, Dean it was all about you missing him. Last episode Sam even was like "he'll be fine" and you were like "..."

"I didn't mean to add to your distress" you need to not sound sarcastic when you say these things because I know you mean it but you still sound pissed off with Dean and it's not heeelping

Cas breaks my fucking heart talking about how he needed to bring a win back for Dean after failing so many times in a row and then Dean turns around and finally stops giving Cas the cold shoulder (LOL SHOULDERS) and faces him and says Cas isn't the only one "rolling snake eyes" (I'm quoting just because I love how Dean talks, I don't have anything profound to say about the gaming reference)

Now Dean is sounding as miserable as Cas

wait hang on I just remembered that Dean gave Cas a mixtape

They seem to be having a deep conversation challenging each other about if they would kill an innocent, phrased in those terms - I think Cas wants Dean to admit he couldn't because he's having doubts, but Heaven would want him to do it and Cas looks to Dean for guidance. Dean mentions how they've been researching how NOT to kill the baby to not much luck showing they don't WANT to but Cas is testing if this is even their last resort. The moral certainty in the situation is all messed up for them. They never want to kill innocents, but Sam at least has done it before intentionally for the sake of saving the world (4x22) and as much as they like finding other ways, the fate of the planet is a pretty strong motivator to go into a morally grey area...

Dean caves and says they're trying to find another way.

We as in you and me, dumbass.

Less dumb, less ass, more trusting couple :3 That's their un break up get back together code word, because 9x10 put them back together

I had the worrying thought Cas gave the mixtape back because he thought DEAN had broken up with HIM and that Cas had to reluctantly return all the things Dean gave him because if they were broken up what would Cas want with them any more they'd just remind him of Deeeean

Mittens also suggested to me that it was Cas trying to show Dean that he felt he'd messed up and was trying to apologise and show that he knew he'd hurt Dean and that he didn't deserve the mixtape any more and this is honestly the worst thing I've ever read so I need to try and watch the rest now

oh god I shouldn't have paused where I did because the next thing Dean does is get up, walk into Cas's space, talk about Team Free Will to Cas's face and I feel a piece of my soul that has been soaked in bitterness that Cas was unconscious and had no idea Dean called it that sarcastically once a million years ago, has finally been put to rest that Cas is now officially, knowingly, a member of Team Free Will and also that Dean remembered calling it that, apparently thinks of them as it.

It's so fucking fanservicey but you know what it's season 12, I fully intend to buy this on DVD when it comes out, I deserve my little TFW loving heart to have some fan service of Dean calling them that again despite it being one of those things where logically I'd say Dean should never repeat it because it was a off-hand comment that got blown all out of proportion by the fandom loving having a thing to call the squad.

(The part of me that makes bad speculative decisions is remembering that Dean used that phrase when he was resisting Michael and was a direct result of talking to him face to face and being told he had no free will - how that relates to the theme of the season is interesting because they're not facing any direct threat to their free will, apparently. But their choices still matter. Michael's not coming back. She says loudly and firmly to herself.)

[edit from later: well THERE’S your direct threat to your free will!]

Also it's including Cas and Dean using that phrase is a strong reminder that it's not just the brothers Winchester, but that Team Free Will is the main unit of the show - and Dean knows and acknowledges that (and has probably been reading Winchester Gospels meta to try and work out what would be the best songs to give Cas on his mixtape and incidentally picked up the idea the fandom liked calling them that)

[edit from later: reminding Cas he was a member of Team Free Will was fucking inviting that, you take it back Dean Winchester. I hate hindsight-activated dramatic irony]

They were standing so close. I think Dean patted Cas's shoulder briefly on the way out the door. Also once the "official" conversation was over, Dean found it much harder to meet Cas's eye, probably because they're that close to kissing if there's nothing else to discuss.

Dean leaves and Cas is left standing in his room - the camera goes back to his face as he looks mournfully around Dean's room. Like. At his bed or something idk I'm not an expert

[efl: oh my god]

I love Amanda Tapping and Bobo and Glynn. Buying them all a round.

Anyway Kelly and Dagon.

Oh dear, bloody bathtub, and no sign of Kelly?

She's sitting in the corner wrapped in something that looks kind of like an American flag or has one in the corner, and is kind of stunned in a I just had a religious experience way about her baby not letting her die. She loves him, is the problem.

Look at all this character complexity wow

She spoke to her baby about how they couldn't be together and they had to die, but the baby saved them both - for now - and honestly she was a religious woman anyway... I wonder if she thinks that the baby preserving its safety in the womb while its not ready to be born is a sign it will protect her and Dagon is wrong and that the baby loves her back... A good cover for if we go back to Buckleming characterisation, Kelly being reluctant and protective of the baby even if she obviously hates being imprisoned and is terrified, we now have a few different sides to her feelings about it explored...

*Amanda messing around filming through the bunker railings because they're fun* this time Sam caught in a circle. He was caught in a triangle in 12x16 so I'm starting to think the theme is that Sam is trapped, in a weird way. Not sure if foreshadowing or representative of his mental state. Obviously he floats around on the surface a lot making head choices instead of heart choices, and they still think they're working for the BMoL even if it's shady and weird, they're still technically ON that decision, or, well, Sam is. Even if this episode is unrelated, the triangle was pretty much for that in 12x16 as far as I could tell, so now it's just repeating Sam is trapped. As well as sitting at the Bunker table with his feet up so he's lost 2 tally marks already towards wanton bunker mistreatment and we're like 10 minutes into the episode...

Uhoh, Sam isn't sleeping. Dean seems to be wandering through the Bunker, hopefully carrying a cloud of "we're communicating now?" with him. Maybe they will TALK *gasp* *sound of a glass shattering in the otherwise silence*

Sam: so we can't find Dagon Me: you better not fuckin say what I think - Sam: what if we find the nephilim Me: ho don't do it Sam: it's half-angel Me: fuck off Sam Sam: remember Gadreel Me: EVERY DAY Sam: there was a spell Me: I FUCKING KNOW Sam: I'm an idiot Me: Listen we have proposed this idea like every single random plot twist that's happened since 9x11 and if you say what I think you're about to say then yes I'm sitting with Dean and judging you from here to ever for this Sam: omg how did we forget we had that grace extracting needle thingy in the basement for 3 years Me: Because you're a fucking idiot and I love you but you need to know.

I watched 9x10-12 very recently, like, this week recently, and I am distressed and Sam is predictable if you have been screeching through the walls of reality at him for a few weeks - apparently he heard me

Sam is also sitting in the library, not in the exact place he was in 9x10 in his head, but Dean just went to get a beer and came found him and in 9x10 imaginary Dean yelled at Sam if he wanted a beer and didn't show up so this somehow folded the entire thing back in on itself and this is why Dabb era agitates my migraines

I just can't believe that for once in our fuckin' lives we were like what if this happened and then a few weeks later on the show Sam's like wait what if we actually did the thing that the fans all instantly decided we should do

Dean's "yay we found another way!" look

Cas isn't in his room (CAS HAS A FUCKING ROOM IN THE BUNKER PARADE) and I am so baffled because I thought that he was still in Dean's room chilling on Dean's bed waiting for him to get back with the beers that I couldn't understand why Dean even thought Cas was in another room.

I mean to be fair the show has been so fan fictiony I can be allowed to forget that Dean supposedly wouldn't forget that

shoving aside my mistaken idea Cas was still in Dean's room, Dean gets a whole lot of sad music while staring mournfully into Cas's room after Cas was last seen staring mournfully into Dean's room

TBH Dagon's starting to sound more and more like an overbearing helicopter parent who has the whole plan for lil Satan Jr's life. Does mother know best? It's literally a debate of interpretation coming from their desires - Dagon wants him to be an evil monster who takes over the world and consumes everything. Kelly just wants him to be a regular kid (and Sam and Dean have maybe hit on the way to do that) and interprets his actions as loving her back and using his powers for good.

I suppose if Satan jr isn't evil then it'll be a story about mother's love being right, which could be interesting with where the Mary stuff goes. I still hope there's a reckoning about Sam and Mary and the Azazel deal which of course this mirrors even if so far it's been a bit weird about it because it's just kind of over there happening. Sam got to explore this with Magda and the Hitler's great niece thing, and came to the same conclusion they weren't evil, whatever their family or powers were. And same for himself, something he had to cope with (the Hitler episode makes more sense now with the nephilim story). Now we have the nephilim and Sam has been keeping himself up at night until he hit on a way to give it a chance from birth to be good and uncorrupted, like he never got.

Dagon's talking about being right at the baby's side, about nurturing and loving him - being at his side to help him kill everything, like a mother should. Now we have Dagon actively competing to be the other mother figure, the evil one. Kelly and Dagon as like, shoulder angel and demon to the baby. Two competing motherly instincts. Possibly representative of the torn loyalties/actions Mary's been through, from her deal with Azazel through to deciding to work with the BMoL and all the Ketch stuff, on the Dagon side, and her genuine love for Sam and Dean and wanting what's best for them on the Kelly side. As a metaphor for her entire influence on their lives and the story of the show, the Dagon side has utterly won out, as her deal took her from Sam and all she could do was offer one "sorry" as a ghost (the loving, ineffectual Kelly side), before Sam was left to the vulnerability of being jerked around by demons and eventually by Lucifer himself until he was possessed by him. But Kelly has a trust in the baby's nature, and Sam is inherently good, although tbh I may be forgetting everything but has this literally not been addressed from Mary's POV since 12x03 (hi Berens) where her idea of Sam and Dean were represented with the little 4 year old ghost for Dean, and the FREAKY MONSTER BABY in the crib? I was so sure there'd be a deeper exploration of Mary's issues with this - that Sam had been made into a monster and what he'd been through. Kelly having a moment where she is so convinced by Dagon's words that the baby is a monster that she'd rather kill herself to take it out with her, might mirror the sort of revulsion Mary COULD have, even for a moment, learning what Sam was made into. But Kelly loves the baby anyway and trusts its nature and intentions.

We'll see who's right.

Cas cas cas cas

He never looks happy. I can never tell when he's just grumpy or actually worried about something.

But in this case, yeah he stole the Colt :P Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

Blah blah stuff I was saying about homes and loyalties. And now I get why Mittens was suggesting he gave the tape back as an apology - he knows Dean will be mad about what he's about to do, and already IS mad at Cas for how he's acted so far, so really what hope does Cas have of escaping with Dean's good opinion after doing what needs to be done (he hasn't said it yet but pfft I'm deep in season 9 now, that phrase haunts me). If he WAITED he'd know Sam hit on an answer and they could have TFW'd it, but his loyalty to Heaven has confused things. This is 6x21 I guess - Cas comes in to have an emotional conversation with Dean at the end of 6x20 but in 6x21 Bobby reveals he stole important lore he had on opening Purgatory - in fact, it WAS the lead Cas needed to get the thing done. So we're still on the season 6 repeat, but of course Cas is more reasonable even if he's conflicted right now and seeming to pick Heaven (mostly because he's conflicted and even if Dean's pissed at Cas he makes it really super clear he loves him and sees him as part of the team as well - now for Cas to catch on :P) ... I think there's time for Cas to come around that he didn't have in season 6 as this is earlier in the season.

UGH Cas you need to change your phone background. WHY is it still the Buddy Boyle cloudburst. Did you steal your phone from an angel you killed back in season 9 or something? I mean I know you have a new phone since then so why do you keep using that background???

dear art department,

get a new picture of the sun coming from behind a cloud, seriously,

love from,

someone who re-watches season 9 all the time

Anyway that's a lot of missed calls and texts from Dean - after that apology, right back to doing the same thing.

The fact Cas takes his phone out and looks each time while it rings out is just awful

the decisive way he hits the reject call button and tucks his phone into his inside pocket, next to his heart - and where he was keeping the mix tape

Kelvin literally spelling out "You're doing the right thing, putting angelkind above the Winchesters" pfft

pointing out someone is doing the right thing as a reassurance IMMEDIATELY says there's a conflict whether this is the right thing or not, and then he makes it clear that Cas is putting angels above the Winchesters I mean, this is basic :P Cas belong with the Winchesters, heaven is manipulating him, he needs constant reassurance it's the right thing while being torn by all the love and family and having a room and Dean making him mixtapes...

But then Cas turns it around that he isn't dealing with this conflict at all, actually, and he's like, I'm doing this FOR the Winchesters (that word again - "for" - what Cas uses every time he makes a decision, and while dealing with the consequences, explains that it was FOR them, or has someone else tell him it was all FOR Dean or whatever (hi Metatron). He is putting them above everything again, like he did in 12x09 when he killed Billie - he'd rather do something reckless and stupid to keep them AWAY from a problem that could get them hurt, and he will lose their trust and faith but know they're alive and well... Same deal in season 6, never coming to them. "where were you when I needed to hear it?" - well, giving you back your fucking mixtape because it is a symbol that we love and trust each other and don't take that back even when we hurt each other.

I think the problem is Cas still feels like an angel to them (Mittens is watching 6x20 over there and mentioning it just enough to drive me crazy :P) - he still considers himself the Winchesters' guardian... Aka he is an angel who will outlive them and he just wants them, from an abstract, faraway place, to be happy and well... He will sacrifice anything to get that done but Dean (and Sam) just want him around hanging out with them, as part of the family unit, TFW working together on a problem and doing it the hard way as long as it means honest, together, and as a team. And for Cas to be integrated into the family, and maybe there are easier shortcuts (the lazy way to kill the monster is just to bring the Colt along instead of doing extra research to figure out a better way - the theme of the season being better ways) but better to do things the harder way and get the better result and to all love and trust each other at the end of the day and to feel happy in what we did, not sick and morally compromised.

(I really hope Dean admitting he wanted to find a better way as a way of saying he didn't want to kill the nephilim is the guidance Cas needed - that this subverts the "i watched you rake leaves" thing but... aaaah)

Anyway Cas's face when he says he'll kill the girl so they don't have to... CAS the call you rejected was because they FOUND THE BETTER WAY

Also not for nothing but the Colt can't kill Lucifer - how confident are we it can kill his kid?

But pfft Joshua thinking Cas is doing it to save his reputation - that he cares about the Winchesters more than Heaven - and Cas is like pfft screw my reputation in Heaven I'm doing this to protect Sam and Dean from tarnishing their lovely little souls.

pfft

hey a redshirt angel showed up

Cas leading a bunch of angels while holding the Colt. I am confused about how much I like this. I don't like it at all because of what he's doing but it's also sort of cool to see Cas at work doing stuff by himself (ish) like how he naturally leads angels, how he has the Colt (and the angels follow his lead because he has 1000x the experience of them put together but the lil baby has shot one shotgun once in his whole life... uh.)

We need the gun range scene where Dean teaches Cas to shoot

I like that Dagon is watching TV though. I mean she has a pretty boring job tbh - she has to wait out a pregnancy and she's confident the baby she wants to survive will survive and she doesn't care about the mother's survival so what else is there to do but watch TV

Seriously, Cas is still just sneaking through the house and I have no idea if he knows how to shoot it or even hold it. The one promo pic of him with it wasn't super inspiring. I sort of feel like he's going to waste a bunch of bullets.

Be hilarious if he had an Eileen parallel since that was even in the recap and Eileen and Cas were paralleled so much in 12x17 - why wouldn't Cas have an epic slo mo but Dagon dissolves away and random redshirt angel gets it? :P

LOL Cas shot and she disappeared

*awards self some chocolate*

He didn't get the slo mo or kill the other guy but I'll fuckin' take it

now he has to decide, Dagon or Kelly as the second bullet?

Or just give up now and maybe she'll let them go because it's hilarious to watch them run

oh look Dagon's about to kill the red shirt

anyway Cas was lining up another shot at her while she was distracted - prioritising killing her over killing Kelly - and then Kelvin stops him and tells him to find Kelly. Obviously to kill her, but I feel like Cas is gonna make off with her if the promo pics are anything to go by - tempted by the idea of a better way? Just can't kill her? I should prrroobably just watch... No point speculating things randomly when I don't have any meta ideas for why that aren't obvious :P

Kelvin is pretty brave to leap into that fight - I hope he doesn't get dusted

Cas holding the gun at hip height also means he's shooting at Kelly's stomach if he can fire

He did change the way he was holding it from the other times so I think that's very symbolic now.

Also the camera is making Cas into the monster, and Kelly is terrified :<

Yep she remembered his name and Cas bottled out of killing her and made off with her. Which I think also bought Kelvin some screen time because Dagon was too busy realising her captive was unattended to finish him off.

Cas had Kelly at his mercy and couldn't do it, so I suppose now he calls up the Winchesters and fesses up?

This is the halfway point of the episode

Oh look now Cas has betrayed them, SAM gets to make the call - 7x01 there, Dean stops reaching out to Cas, Sam does it instead because Dean is feeling too betrayed and hurt to deal with it. The first call was probably "dude where are you, we found a better way" but this is immediately post betrayal

When the animated japanese erotica thing came up again in 12x06, I did not seriously credit that we'd get a repeat of the whole shebang :P

Dabb era, man. Fuckin' Dabb era

Anyway Dean's angrily loading guns which he does when he's pissed

Pfft Dean and the Colt... it's a thing. He had it under his pillow. So Cas WAS staring longingly at Dean's bed and wanted the uh, phallic gun that was under it. The gun that Dean's trying to absorb into his own being because he has such a thing for waving the phallic gun around and wanting to shoot it.

Pfffffffft.

And he feels used because Cas came into his room and took something private and trusted from his bed - they had a MOMENT and Dean dared to express his love for Cas and... this is how Cas repaid him.

Listen this is why I don't speculate: the little clip of Dean looking pissed when they meet Cas at the motel? Way past the halfway point because I haven't even seen it yet. Dean isn't pissed because Cas hasn't talked to them for months and that's the first time he sees him. He's pissed because he made Cas a mixtape, Cas tried to give it back, then Dean professed his love, and Cas betrayed the trust of his BED.

Dean is a lover spurned and he wants to kick Cas's butt for it - he starts talking about Cas being "feathery" and turning him back into an angel (or junkless or whatever) whenever he's really pissed. The more he's happy with Cas the more human he is ("morning, sunshine, want some coffee?") and the more upset and spurned he is the more his language refers to Cas as an angel and all the shit Dean's said about them since season 4 comes back up.

And he pointedly packs an angel blade. I mean, he's seriously feeling violated by this >.>

Sam plays the mediator a lot because Dean and Cas can be so fucking unreasonable about each other because they're emo teenagers when it comes to their feelings for each other. It's not Sam's personality, per say, it's just he had to watch his brother say he'll kick Cas's ass while packing an angel blade and Sam has to be like "!!! no !!!"

"He came into my room and he played me" "He played us both"

^ Sam popping up in the background "and Sam!"

Just... the fact Sam is so tacked on after Dean and Cas had a deep personal moment about the fucking mixtape Dean made Cas (I haven't stopped grinning since that happened and it's really affecting how I view this episode). Sam just isn't personally violated after a deep emotional moment.

"He came into my room"

I mean

It's so PERSONAL

(You’re talking by the war room table - bad idea)

And that could mean anything to Sam - he doesn't know it was JUST about the mixtape, and that Cas essentially was relying on Dean storming out the room as he usually does when he talks to Cas to get the Colt. I mean, Dean n Cas could have had a wild make up sex moment, and then Dean went off to get beer and left Cas lying in his bed, where he just so happened to get his hands on the Colt. Sam doesn't know the details of this violation :P

(But, ignoring the gross romantic overtones of what ACTUALLY happened, this is how it's playing)

*Cas angry driving*

Kelly trying to make light of the fact Cas didn't murder her, like, thanks, you came in and pointed a gun at me but then bottled out and somehow it's still the best thing that happened to me all day.

Cas looks sadder than ever. "Please don't thank me. I had a mission and I failed." Now he's got all emotionally messed up by not wanting to kill an innocent, Sam and Dean are in trouble, and he knows the ball is back in their court if he can't do the one thing he thought he had to to make this go away for them. His sadness is that they're going to get entangled in this again one way or the other. And instead of feeling like he took the moral high ground, and that it's good he didn't kill Kelly, it's just another list of failures this season - the vampire hunt, not finding Sam and Dean in prison, letting Kelly get away the first time, probably a ton of feelings of blame for all the other episodes where they didn't have stunning results that he was involved in like 12x07, 12x10, 12x12...

"And now I don't know" - Cas not knowing what to do is when he panics. He likes knowing what to do :< He has a wee bit of a bad track record when he doesn't know what to do with himself, whether it's because something else latches onto his lack of direction, or he leaps into a bad decision by himself...

Dagon lying to Lucifer - does that even work?

Nope.

"Which one?" "Castiel" *Lucifer literally breaks down into hysterical despairing laughter* I think he never wants to hear that name again...

he called Cas a "purse dog" which is even worse than the normal dog references levelled at Cas. Yikes.

That was actually not a cringeworthy scene, maybe because Lucifer and Crowley weren't talking :P

Is Cas actually trying to call Sam and Dean?

Nope, he called Joshua. Oh dear, he was getting orders. He sounds so season 4. And that defeated tone of voice as he recites to Kelly how she has to die.

(Oh no, Cas actually EXPLAINING what would happen if a human stepped through the gate with the sort of technical detail nerds eat up, and Cas sounding all cosmic and like it's not weird at all to casually contemplate what would happen to your atoms when you tried to go through a gate to Heaven that wasn't meant to let you through... I've always loved physics professor Cas, especially a non-AU one where he just goes to teach it because why not.)

"Your child could bring the universe to its knees" "Or lift it to its feet. This baby - nothing is born evil" "I can't take that chance. None of us can."

*flails at these lines* I'm starting to like Kelly. She's arguing a pretty simplistic POV but it's one in line with the whole Team Free Will thing and the idea of hope - this season has had a lot of hope and hopelessness. The 3rd way isn't mentioned - that it's a normal baby and Kelly goes to live a regular life and all the powerful forces lose interest in her and the baby... In a way Cas's POV is mired in years of trauma and saving the universe and making complicated shades of grey decisions and harsh choices for the greater good, or, well, for Dean. Because of Dean. Everything always about Dean.

I don't WANNA make everything about Destiel but "none of us can" is about Dean, and Dean made Cas a mixtape and everything is awful

Poor Kelvin.

"W W C D - what would Castiel do?" that's the weirdest Jesus imagery attached to Cas but I kind of want one of those rubber bracelets they used to hand out with phrases like that on :P

of course what Cas would do is the big question, and so far he's been pretty reliably unreliable and making bad decisions out of heart

Too much heart etc

*Cas closes all the blinds and moves Kelly around.* He's sort of acting like a prison guard too.

Kelly describing how she killed herself - also great dialogue and acting... Wow I'm really starting to like her. They're having to work with her being a bit of a religious ditz in some respects - interpreting it as a miracle and using that word - but they're making up for so much lost time with her characterisation and filling in the person behind all the being dragged around. Kelly has HOPE and LOVE for her baby and felt its power as goodness... Then she speaks just a little too long and stops sounding sure and starts sounding like she just wishes it was a miracle/is the sort of person prone to believing in them, and a plan, a higher power, which has been utterly debunked since season 5 and we have to know that as an audience that she's talking too far into her simplistic ideas unaffected by the gritty reality of Heaven and Hell in this world. I mean sure she's got such a simple view on it all but she's got a stance and she's been through a change and she's sticking with it.

Cas listening to all this - the way his face moves when she talks about giving up and killing herself. Oh no. He understands :< And it's her talking about a higher power that gets him to sit down and talk to her.

Cas talking about his season 4 self and then saying they're all "winging it" oh no oh no.

Oh noooo

And now he has to describe that Lucifer has no plan and that unlike Sam, born to a great destiny after a huge amount of manipulation to meet what seemed to be the originally described destiny of the universe since it was created, as per God, Kelly has this devil baby for no reason except Lucifer passing on the existential angst he's suffering since existing outside of The Plan

Really, Raphael was extremely ahead of the curve in having a massive existential crisis about wtf you do when you run out of story. Cas seemed to think it was an optimistic thing at the start of season 6 according to 6x20, and the rope you hang yourself with when you have free will by the end of it. But this season, after God left and wrote his final manuscript and all the stuff with Metatron and writing was cleared away - there's REALLY no story left and season 12, literally another half of the show later, is getting back to this freak out.

"I'm sorry. You were just there."

That did sound really heavy-handed that Cas might end up having to protect the nephilim if it's born and Kelly dies, and that she was seeing Cas as a potential guardian...

Of course then Cas puts his hand on her stomach when she makes him, smiles a bit despite himself, because, idk, the miracle of life... But then either Lucifer or the baby uses that contact to see stuff - the conflict at the portal I guess. With yellow eyes roar-y sound effects.. I guess Lucifer or Dagon will learn this, and the nephilim is working against Cas and Kelly...

*brief interlude where we have a guest for dinner so I disappear for ages*

ANYWAY I need to get back to this I was interrupted right as Cas and Kelly were having an EPIC conversation about choice it's killing me :P

mittensmorgul good luck. I've got it paused about 2/3 of the way through

elizabethrobertajones Cas just had his hand put on the tummy - forcefully - and he smiled but actually something bad appears to have happened because her eyes lit up and did the demon roary sound effecct

mittensmorgul RIGHT?!

elizabethrobertajones I think the nephilim is spying on them for Lucifer >.> idk if that proves it's evil or if he just has a magic connection?? and it's being exploited and the poor baby is a tool as well WHO KNOWS theeeemes

Anyway I guess they both sensed that - I don't think Kelly is evil but Cas seems to have maaaaybe seen what it saw? Got a premonition for free?? Who knows. Coming right after the talk about Cas being a potential guardian I think the vision showed him protecting her, so it may be pretty significant that he's going to be their guardian... The vision MAY be benign in some senses for THEIR conversation even if it seems kind of dangerous that that might be how Dagon finds them at the portal by having a vision OF her attacking them at the portal or something

Thinking of happening to find people, Dean is at the door. Knock knock, that's my gun.

Woah finally a circumstance to flip that time Cas slammed Dean against a wall

They're framed in the circle this time - interesting we had Sam alone in one circle and Dean and Cas in a charged situation in the other circle

Sam and Dean have both chosen to wear their best jackets for this

Uh, anyway. Argh, Cas getting pushed against the wall and just kind of going and watching Dean, and Dean's so angry, and Cas is just... letting him shove him around. I think letting is the operative word. These days angels aren't quite so iron rigid that like 4x22 you punch them and it makes a clang if they don't want to get punched. But yeah. Cas is still an angel, and he didn't HAVE to get shoved harmlessly against the wall. He could push back, but he KNOWS he did something that would piss Dean off, and he's just gonna ride it out and take the blame and take the punishment... The mission isn't finished yet so he would probably do anything to make sure it was, but only with the "for Dean" tick box checked, that it wouldn't hurt Dean in the process >.>

elizabethrobertajones HOLYC RAP SAm was suspicious THE ENTIRE TIME?? He put the tracking thing on Cas's phone while Dean was being "scammed" out of the Colt because dean let his guard down and fell for Cas's little moment with the tape and he was over-emotional about keeping the Colt close

mittensmorgul yep

elizabethrobertajones and Sam saw something fishy about the way Cas wouldn't look them in the eye and managed to 10 steps ahead Cas while Dean was giving him heart eyes and calling him a "dumbass"

mittensmorgul yep, but Cas was looking Dean in the eye. A lot.

elizabethrobertajones sweet sweet eye love making Ugh :P Dean only looked away at the end when he said he was going to get a beer and I think he was gonna kiss Cas if he didn't distract himself

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones I wonder if Cas's plan B was fall into bed with Dean, grab the colt when he was distracted last night on earth their relationship like yeah he'll never trust me again but

mittensmorgul oh no wait for Dean to nod off and then grab the gun and run

elizabethrobertajones sorry that's kind of morbid :P but yeah

mittensmorgul D:

elizabethrobertajones >.> Okay I hate that but I sort of think it was somewhere on Cas's plans >.> he's heaven's greatest strategist after all went in there with a goal to distract Dean and get the Colt at whatever cost (friendship wise) to protect Dean in the long term

mittensmorgul yeah, I don't think he counted it out as a possibility

elizabethrobertajones I wrote a long thing about how he still sees himself as their guardian and not quite sure about being their friend, after you reminded me of 6x20

mittensmorgul Yeah, because he could live with Dean not trusting him, as long as DEAN WAS ALIVE to not trust him...

elizabethrobertajones or at least he's not sure he can trust he'd be their BFF

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones but he CAN do huge gestures from afar that protect them even if it's at the cost of their relationship the abstract concept of alive winchesters matters to Cas in an angel-y way

"She's difficult to kill, okay?!" "you think?" yeah they're all struggling with this at the moment :P All having the same encounters but apart and coming to the same BLOODY OBVIOUS conclusions

gosh maybe WORKING TOGETHER is the answer

Oh gosh Cas isn't the babysitter

...

*obligatory fandom reference despite the fact Cas has never brought pizza to the bunker which tbh now I think about it is really rude of him and probably on Dean's list of reasons he's currently pissed at Cas*

Anyway Cas tries to do the same speech he's done in 12x09 about how he wants to protect them and keep them safe and so he does dumbass things to do so

Dean's like WHEN ARE WE EVER SAFE. LAST WEEK A BLOOD-DRINKING GOD HAD ME KNOCKED OUT AND SARAN-WRAPPED IN A MEAT LOCKER AND THAT WAS A NORMAL THURSDAY NIGHT

The answer is for Cas to come on all the MotW to hold his hand

[edit from future!me: you’re always right when you’re sarcastic trope x what you expect but not how you expected it]

At least he's being honest about his motivations.

... Dean has no way of knowing it's a sandbox unless Cas told them, so there's that for off-screen communication.

Kelly has a "sandbox!" moment of realisation of what she saw... Was it Cas protecting her from Dagon or the angels she wonders?

"We've found another way!" "which you'd know if you answered the phone" I love when episodes answer my own meta neatly within the time limit :P No loose end on that one.

Cas having the similar ?!?!? moment of realising how silly they were to forget about this.

I mean he has grumpy quibbles about it and holy crap in my 9x11 rewatch I got so distracted by how the needle was not just extracting gadreel's grace but the left over god crap in Sam (as I realised the trials and mark of cain were essentially EXACTLY the same thing from 2 different ends of the spectrum - big helping of Chuck mojo to wield his power, being helping of Amara mojo to wield her power. Sam flashed back to doing the trials - to significantly EARLY in doing the trials, right back to 8x17.) and I wondered if that was screwing with the results, and also why the spell failed.

It's not like a woah angel fall spell revelation but it was something I was wondering about and honestly after sitting around wondering about the mechanics of it for an afternoon just for kicks a while back, the fact this is all back in the spotlight is really making me laugh

Anyway, Kelly's not up for it >.>

Come back Kelly

She thinks both of them dying together (which she was aiming for at the start but for bad reasons but also self-sacrificing reasons which are still motivating her here, that she'd go with Cas to protect everyone) is better than living but with her baby just being a regular old human baby. Dean values humanity above anything - "at least he dies human!" he said about Sam in 4x21 when Bobby suggested detoxing would kill him. If there's a chance for them to LIVE human then that's the happy dream ending, the case solved, random humans can go back to their lives like nothing happened DREAM for Dean so he thinks Kelly has lost her mind. She's working on very different principles here and agreeing with Cas about what to do but not why - Cas just wants to protect humanity (and by humanity - yeah you know the drill)

If Cas steals the impala too I'm going to scream.

"it's like herding cats"

I love when Dean and Cas have long staring competitions though.

Cas seems to agree to talk and drags Kelly off in much the same way as Dagon dragged her off. Even though they agree and he is seeming to be protective of her, and LIKES Kelly and sees her as a person now (despite his original intention to just shut his eyes and kill her)... but yeah, still just the other side of the coin of Heaven and Hell pulling her around and controlling her.

*camera takes its eye off Cas*

*whoops back on it to watch Misha fumbling catching the keys* I wonder how many takes before Amanda gives up and is like fine we'll use that one - at least you CAUGHT them

huh, he gets in the back. That is NOT what I was expecting.

What the heck Cas you don't just throw the keys to Kelly

Now she's gonna steal the car

okay so like I said, things are predictable but not how you expect... Dabb era in a nutshell and also cars are involved

I wonder if Cas didn't immediately stop Kelly stealing the car because he knows they're both indestructible but the car isn't and Dean is in the mood where he will actually stab Cas if the car gets busted up.

There's something a lot like Hael here, which is how Cas's story all started with the character reboot of human Cas (he never recovered from it emotionally; Cas between 8x23 and 9x01 are more different than 9x01 and now Cas in some ways)

But yeah, the "where are you going?" "heaven and I'll make you tell me how to go there" thing - it's the same assured way Hael uses to talk about how they'll go see the grand canyon and then she'll possess him.

And he hopes he can talk her out of it. He agreed to talk to Dean about options but Kelly has decided what is best for her and her kid - to go to Heaven, where she's clearly imagining a Mary's Heaven she left behind scenario of chillaxing with her baby even though Heaven doesn't work like that. Now he can't talk to Dean about options but he's stuck in the car with Kelly... all he can do is talk if he doesn't want to crash the car

oh no Lucifer must have been talking to her pretending to be the baby. Weird contradictory if I go with your plan (to go to Heaven and be obliterated) then you'd make sure my son is born? And she thinks it was talking to her. Now it's full on creepy if it was ACTUALLY the baby, but... I suspect foul play

Oh why does Cas never get anything good. We have the exact same Hael situation except at least Hael wasn't being controlled/manipulated (can we retcon all of Kelly’s silly actions were because of this?) and just had no idea how to want things in a human non-creepy way and seemed to think what she wanted was good in a rational angel way. But Kelly has a ton of confidence all of a sudden, like... a divine purpose, but obviously not :P And suddenly all that stuff about protecting her child? That seemed really sweet and nice when she and Cas were talking person to person before the creepy stuff started? Now she wants to FORCE it on him and give him no choice. She's in the driver's seat in a stolen car, making the demands, and now she's taken choice out of the equation >.>

Anyway Kelly really wants a guardian angel but Cas already has his hands full with the bloody Winchesters

hijacking their angel too

Cas continues to have his existential crisis and instead of pointing out some legit complaints about being abducted and forced into it, he lists even more of his failures that he's accrued since the LAST time he was listing all of his failures

this is like... the worst day ever for Cas, and he once got stabbed with a thing meant to kill angels by turning them into black foam from the inside out :P

He betrayed his friends - his FAMILY

Holy shiiiit Kelly is talking about her PAST and who she was before she was the container for Lucifer's baby what is thiiiis?

*low bar leapt over with style*

"I wish I had your faith" "You will" Oh gosh those are creepy lines from her. And tragic ones from Cas. Because he really has no faith any more in anything because he knows that the higher powers are on holiday and the original plan ended 6 years ago and everything since has been a series of over-reacting disasters usually his fault.

I am so pleased that the Kelly actress (who I don't even know the NAME of because she's been so insignificant that no one talks about her and presumably so hated she's keeping a low profile) has actually had stuff to do... I hope people weren't predisposed to hate her because she'd done nothing so far and were willing to give her a chance with better writers, because as a salvage job on her character this isn't half bad. She's still doing really irrational stuff but she's by now clearly being manipulated, and her actual moments of character stuff outside of that are actually exploring who she is, what she wants, and how this has changed her, working within the pretty crappy bounds of this story but at least giving the actress stuff to work with and the character some depth.

Anyway Dean hates Cas's truck :<

I mean it's symptomatic of this current break up where Cas tried to give the mixtape back and all but

(I split up with my angel boyfriend and all I got in the divorce was this shitty truck)

elizabethrobertajones OH NO Dean's sympathetic to Cas's pliiiiiiight even while he's piiiisssed "he's so desperate for a win he can't even see straight"

mittensmorgul I KNOW

elizabethrobertajones and that's while being totally furious at him

mittensmorgul SCREAMING FOREVER

elizabethrobertajones and Sam has no idea and Dean's keeping a tally of all the miserable stuff Cas has been through

Uhoh, the Heaven portal.

Why do I have a feeling this is going to go terribly.

Cas can get a win on HIS terms if he thinks/knows Kelly will be obliterated by doing this (and he asks if she's sure). She thinks she's about to - I have no idea, but survive this and have her baby so SHE'S sure about what SHE thinks this is about.

and will totally not give Cas his win

but he's kind of been manhandled into doing this

does it even count even if it WORKED

which it won’t

"As long as you're here I know it's going to be okay"

*Cas like ....*

Ew why is Joshua this random white bloke

Okay so he did die instantly, which would have been shitty if it had been the other guy or ANY black dude as a hasty re-casting (especially as we have no idea how Kelvin is at this point but I'm guessing NOT GOOD) buuut even so :P

I mean it was intentionally meant to be a record scratch end that idea moment that Heaven was really going to be up for much or have any useful sway on this, or that Josha was meant to be anything... But ugh :P Well, on the whole I guess bland white guy getting insta-killed is better than a black dude being pointlessly added to their tally, but Joshua was the last named angel in Heaven, really cool when we actually met him (this doesn't feel like it counts) and definitely always the cool angel we met that day because it's so important in that instance. Like yeah this whole onging existential crisis thing - he was the warning sign of that in 5x16 where Cas lost faith that day because of what he said that confirmed the universe was this badly run, and where we are is now deep in the results of the universe having a god that doesn't care and being a mere 6 years post apocalypse and being run by no one, not even the archangels who'd kept order in the meantime, or the way Joshua had talked to God. And it removes God's last link here except in the main characters and their new stewardship of the earth, their legacy handed to them by God in 11x23...

Mneh, I liked Joshua from 5x16 though and even it fits with this theme of the season and was MEANT to be disappointing, it is hard to separate what the show does wrong from what it does intentionally to unsettle and upset you :P

Anyway Dagon doing stuff

Does Cas still have the Colt on him - was there even time in all the hassle for Dean to get it back?

Aw Kelvin's dead.

Pfft yeah Dean took the Colt and so Cas is going into this with basically nothing

Dagon is revealing how it was aaaall a manipulation, apparently including letting Kelly think Cas was supposed to protect her, even to bring her there.

"sad fluttering aimless little moth"

Oh she's distracted picking Cas up to shake him around some more. Maybe Kelly will continue stealing things and take Cas's angel blade and stab Dagon :P

This episode has done enough to not make it wasteful or annoying to kill her off, since she's actually been genuinely threatening and terrifying and right now if Kelly kills her it's a real victory

Nope, the shitty truck shows up just in time because Winchesters always have your back and somehow know where your heaven portal is parked

wAIT

10x17 Sam was here before

I'm really starting to lose track of season 10 and need to get on with that rewatch holy crap that was embarrassing.

I mean in an episode ABOUT the sandbox and I even thought about Bobbby earlier when Cas was talking about humans not being able to go through it so he did to talk to Bobby, I mean really come on Lizzy

Anyway Sam shoots Dagon pointlessly but enough times to make her drop Cas RIGHT as she was about to dust him, and Dagon was talking ironically about showing up in the nick of time

Noooooooooooooooo RIP Colt

I did not see Yellow Eyed Demon kills Colt instead of the other way around

It did not die in slow motion which is even more disappointing

Aaaaah Kelly powering up Cas

I sort of feel like she's made him her puppet - that the nephilim has "chosen" Cas because he's a good conduit for the power. This is very very not good and again because control is being taken away from Cas and it seems so creepy, it's not a good thing that he's the guardian. If Kelly's vision was from the nephilim, Cas is now in a very dangerous situation that her baby likes him and wants to use him while it can't use its powers for itself.

I think it's awesome a YED died by burning up, not going to lie :P

Not sure Cas knows what happened

OH NO Cas is talking like he knows his purpose in the world in that kind of calm everything's great way

Our Cas is a mess who has no idea wtf he's doing so yeah...

(He did however heal Dean by putting his hand over his arm and catching his thumb under his hand so that's like 10% of hand holding >.>)

Anyway Dean gets to worry about him.

"I know now this child has to be born with ALL of his power" ... Yeah that's exactly what Kelly wanted

Oh boy

"I have faith"

Who are you and what have you done to Cas

Which can be an actual literal question on this show :P

I guess if we're going with the season 6 parallels this is a kind of creepy godstiel thing going on here but he's just a conduit to the power and is slightly off to the side as the guardian angel, though I suspect it's a similar problem >.>

LOL we're not going to let you walk away

*boop*

he does Sam first, of course

"??? Don't - "

*boop*

CHRIST you didn't have to drag the moose skull hanging from Cas's dash OVER SAM that's SO FUCKING RUDE

My dad phoned right at this point so that was bad timing :P

ANYWAY that makes me SO WORRIED about Sam. He keeps being isolated and put in little circles and triangles and I've been dreading the moose skull omen since 12x01 and now it's on top of Sam finally. AAAH.

Tbh there's equally scary Dean might die symbolism but the Sam stuff is wigging me out this year :P

ANYWAY Cas has lost his agency AGAIN to a Lucifer influence AGAIN

Can't believe Amanda Tapping made Cas leave Dean lying on the floor like... there's rude and then there's RUDE.

(I mean Sam was there too but look there was not 1 dead Sam in that warehouse)

I CAN’T BELIEVE AMANDA TAPPING TOOK CAS’S AGENCY AGAIN

Also Sam and Dean lying there pointed away from each other - going different ways.

I jokingly wrote to Mittens that Cas is driving off into the future and then remembered that's how Glynn's last episode ended and I suddenly think that script ending was shown to us just to tease us because of the Claire and Cas parallel, only Claire's hopefully going somewhere positive, and Cas... is possibly now an agent of the destruction of the world so that's all great.

Also Lucifer ended up not being involved again at all and it got so sketchy with Cas I'm now starting to think that the baby probably IS as dangerous as they say it is, Cas was paralleled to Dagon and Dagon at the start had her vision of HER place in the world at the baby's side and that's what it wants from Cas

and also now I'm thinking about the need to destroy fathers on the show and well a little newborn infant fighting Lucifer would be a bit of a joke but it WOULD be cool if nephilim!Cas went and blew up Lucifer as a threat to its power

I'm gonna think about that for a while :P

Also need to go write in Dean making Cas a mixtape to Terrible Coffee AU

#12x19 #season 12 spoilers #suicide cw #can't believe the main plot of season 12 has turned into guardian angel theft #my stuff

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