#dean/cas + hearts

[shallowseeker]

Levianthan blossoms as hearts

Leviathan blossoms as the heart of creation, ugly and born of destruction

The Leviathan blossoms ARE hearts. They're three-pronged hearts. Wrapped in husks (bodies), with blood-red centers (heart/soul). Look closely, and each Levianthan blossom sports three chambers. It's reptilian, like the Leviathan sea serpents, like the heart of an (Immortal) Snake.

WARNING: Gore (Ketch's heart getting ripped out, mainly)

Like the triparted road that has become the "heart" of our narrative, the Leviathan blossom also symbolizes what's left of Team Free Will: Sam, Dean, Cas:

These are familial flowers, signifying the eternal message that family makes you stronger, but it also makes you vulnerable.

///

Hearts are delicious?

Everywhere you look in season 15, Gods and Angels are consuming hearts. Hearts are a classic food of the Gods. (Nectar, ambrosia are legendary as well, and they're after nectar for their spell.) Also, in some versions of Biblical literature, it is the body of the Leviathan that God uses both to feed his chosen ones in the Wilderness and/or create Earth & Heaven.

(1) Ardat kills Ketch by taking his heart. She does this once his heart becomes strong and courageous--once he refuses to give up his friends. (2) The witch screams, "I'll grind your heart to dust." (3) Jack devours a heart.

///

Leviathan flowers + the miracle of death, decay, and rebirth

So. Sprung forth from the Leviathan body of God's oldest enemy, this is the fruit that would allow them to Cage God. It's a betrayal in every sense of the word. It's using the miracle of death, decay, and rebirth against Him.

///

Cas + the little heart he saved

Even though all the other familial hearts were destroyed (reduced to ashes, in fact), Cas saved this one. He stole this little heart, and he fought for it. "Once I had the blossom, I fought." (The blossom was timed to the prayer. The blossom is, in many ways, symbolic of the prayer, too.) It's also the mixtape. He heard it.

///

Later in the episode, we cut to where the blossom is being prepared for the Mark Spell. And two lobules are mostly missing. One is entirely missing, and one is open and weeping, mortally wounded. It resembles a dissected aorta. Only one is intact.

Two hearts are being crushed by this pestle, though only the blood of one party is being spilled.

Cas has saved it, but he's doomed its happiness.

///

Even when you win, you lose

When Sam chooses not to smash the globe, Sam isn't just losing hope. He's choosing not to break Dean and Cas's hearts. Because that's what winning will do.

*looks between them, on the cusp of realizing something*

"I can't. I'm sorry, I just can't." Even when you win (war), you lose so much that it no longer feels like victory.

///

Too bad Chuck was always going to crush them. (How's that for pacifism, eh, Sam?)

Starting with those two.

Cas.

And Dean.

Note the grace-like smoke emission of the orb, as well as the meaty gruesomeness of its guts.

Kill the story by weakening its heart.

[lillylowe]

EDIT: Prints Available

[castiels-undercoat]

I really think if Cas saw the way Dean grieves him when he dies it would entirley change his perspective on the way Dean feels about him.

[deancasforcutie]

you're my angel, come and save me tonight

[wellofdean]

Here's what sticks in my craw: why ON EARTH does fanon imagine that Cas has 'self-esteem issues' and experiences his love for Dean as a wet, miserable kind of yearning? What is it about any part of anything that happens on Supernatural makes anyone think that Cas, a cosmic, Eldritch being, a warrior of god, who literally hung the stars and has existed for a bazillion years, is reduced to teenage angst by Dean's pussy?

Like, when Cas says "the one thing I want I know I can't have" why do y'all think it's a piece of Dean's ass? Why does ANYONE think Cas doesn't know Dean loves him? Dean has shown Cas he loves him with literally everything he has again and again and again. Even the way Dean feels like Cas can absorb his anger is Dean showing Cas love and trust. Cas and Dean have chosen each other, forgiven each other, and been the only reliable thing in each others' lives over, and over and over again. Cas fucking knows that Dean loves him. Cas can literally hear Dean's thoughts, and feel his yearning. Cas was only saying the quiet part out loud when he said he loved Dean, because it was already obvious! If there was anyone feeling wet and lovesick, it would be DEAN, if he ever had a break in the battle to fucking feel things, which he did not.

Like, hear me out: what if the one thing Cas knows he can't have is the one thing he knows he signed over to the empty? His happiness, and by extension, Dean's, because he knows Dean loves him? What if Cas is saying: I know I can't have this thing I want for myself: to be the one to MAKE YOU HAPPY, but I can save you, and maybe Cas's belief in Dean is such that he still hopes and believes Dean will find a way to make himself happy if he lives.

After Cas's death, Dean is trying to live for him. Trying to be what Cas believed he was. It's what CANONICALLY gives Dean the strength to defeat Chuck by not killing him! And, after Dean's death, he CANONICALLY goes in search of happy endings. Like... THAT IS EXPLICITLY STATED.

I AM HAVING AN ALL CAPS MOMENT, SO SUE ME.

Guys, Cas is not a wet, yearning baby who needs Dean to say or do ANYTHING to validate his love. HE KNOWS. He is a being of unimaginable age and power. He is not beleaguered by self-esteem issues, or the need to tongue-wrestle Dean. Like, he might WANT TO, but he CANONICALLY does not need to in order to experience a happiness so complete that it puts paid to his deal. His happiness is THAT NOW DEAN ALSO KNOWS, and he can tell Dean why, and show him who he is in the mirror of that love.

Also, he is not dead, he is just on another plane of existence, and neither is Dean. Cas is a profoundly unselfish badass. He is not fucking PINING. He made a play, the best one he had. He is a strategist, and he knows Dean BY HEART.

[vendettasfanfictioning]

no. you don't understand how funny this scene was to me.

these four basically represented how dean winchester was perceived by others. there's the people who love him; charlie (platonic), sam (familial), and cas (romantic). then there's rowena who, at the time, was the stand-in for their "enemies" (hatred).

and they all need to work together to cure dean. i'm unwell 😭😭

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean and Cas every day not often enough -- 30/?

Supernatural 6x17//My Heart Will Go On

[scoobydoodean]

Castiel’s Motivations [ 5 / ? ] Dean The Narrative Heart [ 13 / ? ]

Supernatural | 4.01, 4.03, 4.07, 4.10, 4.16, 4.18, 4.22

[shyshitter]

it’s been discussed before but hear me out. dean confesses before cas. death has already gone for his heart and cas saved him. there’s a chair between them and his hand shakes as he decides to bridge the gap. he stares at cas’s concerned yet resigned profile and realizes death is going to take his heart again. god took his bravery and death will take his love before dean can do anything about it. he’s made up his mind when cas starts talking to him but cas has already interrupted dean’s speech once and this time dean’s gripping his courage by his bloody fingernails. before he can stop himself, before he can chicken out, he interrupts cas. he apologizes profusely, for everything, for getting cas into this mess, for dragging cas down with him, for treating him like shit, for treating jack like shit. he thanks cas endlessly, for helping him, for staying as long as he has, for choosing him, for forgiving him, for saving him, for saving sam, for saving the world. he pauses, the words nearly choking up in his throat, but he sees cas open his mouth to interrupt and that can’t happen so he keeps going almost mindlessly. “I love you,” he says, eyes wide and both hands gripping cas’s shoulders as if he’s keeping cas from flying off. “I think I’ve loved you for a long time but I didn’t know what to do about it, I didn’t want you to feel bad for not reciprocating. I tried to forget about it or drown it with something else but I failed. Just like I failed now. And now we’re both gonna die. I’m sorry I’m dumping this on you now but I needed to say it, I needed it to be real and my choice, not god’s, not death’s not—” something black begins swirling in the corner of his eye and cas is crying. is he that upset by dean’s feelings? cas removes dean’s hands from his shoulders and switches them so it’s cas clinging to dean. “You weren’t supposed to say it,” cas says between sobs. dean frowns and glances behind him at the black ooze. he knows that ooze. He says cas’s name when he turns back around and cas is still crying but solidifies his face. he shoves dean to the side of the room before using his grace to open the door and grant access to death. the ooze is growing and spitting thick black tendrils around the room. cas’s eyes meet deans. they’re both crying now although dean still doesn’t know why. a black tendril grabs death and drags them through the ooze. cas starts saying something urgently that sounds like “Dean, I lo—” before he’s gone too, stolen by the ooze. dean stares at the spot where cas stood and begins to understand. cas is gone and he doesn’t know why exactly but he had something to do with it. once again, dean felt too much and destroyed the one he loved in the process. he should’ve let death take him instead.

[shallowseeker]

If Cas's heart in the crypt in Goodbye Stranger is like the angel tablet, is there a parallel to Dean's heart in Despair?

Ohh, friend. I've been turning this over and over in my head. I plan to write about it to go with the rest of these mutterings, but I'm not quite there yet in my head. So, know what? I'm gonna ramble, because I'm sleepy and maybe this will help me down the road:

I think...Dean's heart is actually his heart in these scenes. He's literally gripping his heart in pain. Dean has been existentially and physically tortured by Chuck this season, and his heart has been under constant, relentless attack. In seasons 14 & 15, the baddies regularly chant, "I want your heart."

And well. Chuck wants Dean's.

Chuck said it himself. He wanted Dean to reach breaking point. Dean was his primary target, the one he hasn't been able to break, as he wants: "CHUCK: Dean. Brought to the edge of doubt. His sense of duty, his rage winning out in the end."

There is something too in how Chuck wanted Dean to kill Jack, and how he wanted Cas to burn Jack's body beyond hope of retrieval. (SEE: Belphagor.) The plot worked to put pressure on them. Specifically.

///

DEAN + HEART ATTACK Symbolically, Dean's heart is being crushed in the Despair scene. When Death grips it, it starts dying, starved of oxygen.

"What do we do, Ca-?"

And then, Cas is strong enough for both of them, dragging Dean down the hallway to a safer location. This is how Supernatural at large works (they literally trade strength back and forth as a family unit), but Cas here is a callback to earlier in season 15, Golden Time.

We saw hearts getting ripped out left and right this season, but with Cas in the Golden Time episode, there was a conspicuous break in the pattern. We saw bullets pierce his chest, but he remained firm and resolute, chastising men like Chuck.

Overall, with the exception of one wobble re:Jack and destiny, Cas was remarkably strong this season. He stood back, assessed the disaster, looked at the situation as a whole, and saw Chuck's involvement. Then, he decided to get back in the game to fight Chuck. He decided to fight against Chuck's attempts to drain his human family of all hope and meaning. Because Cas has seen and experienced this before...this is Heaven's cruel MO.

///

DEAN'S DYING HEART Chuck has been trying to drain Dean of hope and meaning all season long. That's why he looked so exhilarated when Cas left during Moriah, during the bunker war room confrontation. Chuck's expression was verging on manic. Cas is a Dean's rock, and Chuck knows that. Remove Cas and playing Dean gets a lot easier.

Chuck's manipulation is a direct parallel to the manipulation and torture Dean underwent in Hell. Chuck wants Dean corrupted the same way that Benny's vampire Sire wanted Andrea Kormos corrupted. It's a little bit of an embittered power play with Cas, if you think about it. That's why Cas called himself Clarence Worley in Golden Time. It's a break in his usual undercover pattern, because he's thinking about Chuck's ultimate motivation. This is a feature that sets Cas apart from characters like Benny. He decides to fight for his loved ones (Jack, Dean), corruption notwithstanding. It's a very difficult thing to do, and not many characters on the show are able to do that! I suspect it's Cas's incredibly strained arcs that have given him this resilience.

Keeping with this theme, Chuck was later delighted when Dean crossed a big line...with Amara. Chuck was probably jealous of the real friendship Amara and Dean had developed. Amara's name has structural echoes of the word, "love," and love of all kinds is what makes Dean tick.

In season 11, his love allowed him to step back and encourage Amara to choose forgiveness. But here, in season 15, Dean is so focused on revenge that he can't see straight. He's like how Cas was with Raphael in season 6, reciprocating Raphael's cruelty tenfold. When Dean chooses to kill Amara, it shows us that his heart is severely injured. He's lost his way.

Nonetheless, Dean's heart sputters and makes an attempt at rejuvenation. With the support of his family, he comes to his senses and injures death with her with her own scythe.

///

DEAN VS DEATH Later, gambling to save his hunting community, Dean goes after Death, but she's the wrong enemy. The enemy wasn't ever Death, like it wasn't ever Amara. It was Chuck all along. The sadist. The torturer. Death comes after him like an angry beehive, but she too is a victim of Chuck.

She squeezes his heart. And Cas drags him to the safest part of their home.

(From 9x04 Slumber Party) DEAN: Charlie? Safest place in this joint is the dungeon. So maybe you should...

And there, Cas blocks Death's grip on Dean's heart. Dean's heart is protected by and finds solace within Cas's heart. They share their hearts with each other.

Cas cuts his hand with Dean's blade and barricades the door. Cas's helping hand was the thing that originally dragged Dean from a torturous Hell. Cas's hand and his strength was the thing that left an impression on Dean, underneath his sleeve. Dean's love has lived like this, quiet, unseen and misunderstood by many others. But here, it will become the mark on top of his sleeve.

///

IN THE DUNGEON Dean's heart with regards to the dungeon is a little bit like Cas's with regards to the crypt. Heaven's brutality killed Cas's heart, encased it in stone. His love and memories were ripped away by Naomi's pragmatism.

Likewise, Chuck's brutality made Dean feel like his own heart was poison, one that ruined everything around him. If Cas's heart was dead, Dean's heart was tortured and brutalized, locked in chains, and flayed open. His heart was locked inside Chuck's torture dungeon, as his life and losses played out for Chuck's amusement.

///

SHATTERED

Cas cannot stop Dean's heart from breaking, but he will try to save his life, to not let Chuck have him. Death "breaks" down the door, but Cas tells Dean that he is loved.

With his last breath, Cas throws Dean out of the Devil's Trap, a callback to how he saved him from Chuck's demonic storyline in Hell, with an open hand and a courageous heart. Cas is trying to throw Dean out of Chuck's clutches, out of his narrative trap of killing his heart.

When Cas leaves, he leaves a handprint on Dean's shoulder, thus showing the viewer that not only is Cas in love with Dean, but Dean is in love with Cas. Has been for a long time. Even though he is too stunned to speak, he's literally "wearing his heart on his sleeve."

Alas, Dean is left alone in the dungeon, "shattered."

His heart is shattered, but at least it's not numb, or dead. No, it's bleeding, like the blood on his sleeve.

Dean spends the next episode trying to rally a despairing Sam and a spun-out Jack. He desperately clings to the hope of seeing Cas again, as he springs up the steps towards a deceitful Lucifer. (Dean has been primed to expect Cas back, after all. Any minute now...)

Dean will die a short six months later, but he is not embittered and hopeless. He's trying to save the lives of two little boys. Dean gets tabbed in the heart, but his hope was still alive.

It still is, which is why so many viewers clump together for news of a sequel. The finale literally couldn't "kill" Dean, because of Cas.

[reyolfx]

dean and cas went to hot topic together and picked out a fucking grumpy cat stuffy for claire

[chitaquahq]

I'm forever a Dean defender and that's why I stand by the concept that Game of God hits the hardest in terms of phycological consequences of the space and time displacement of Dean Winchester.

When the lines between Dean in hell (aka Alistair), Endverse Dean and Dean actually begin to blurry in Dean's mind was after the daycare fight— and what happened to Grant.

A bit later (a few days after that tragedy I think) he went to explore the Sisters of Mercy's church with Cas and completely forgot that he wasn't there before that night in Kansas City. He goes "if we had known the sisters where here"— but he could not known, he didn't appear in the Endverse until three days before the Kansas City attempt to kill Lucifer.

It keeps building and by the time we reach Game of God, the circumstances make everything worse than it could possibly be. His displaced guilt and his inability to forgive himself for things beyond his possibilities (what happened in hell, what the other Dean did) sets him on a very familiar cycle of self-destruction.

What Dean learned in hell was to broke himself more than anything else. Alistair destroyed him from within and left the enemy inside him, so that Dean would continue to torture himself even after he was out of hell.

What I mean it's that Dean has to deal with two totally different versions of himself that he could not prevent from happening. He is paying for sins old (time) and sins he didn't even commit (space).

Even if he's been months on the Endverse, you're asking Dean to carry the burden of three different lives. It's insane. He tries so hard not to break and the only other person who knows what he's going through is Cas.

Give that poor man a rest 😩😩

[strawlessandbraless]

Honestly, thank god Cas had a crack in his chassis. How else was Dean Winchester gonna worm his way into the angels heart?

[lazarushound]

My Best Friend (who has never seen Supernatural) Writes an Episode of Supernatural

Everything they know about this godforsaken show is based on my poetry and my insane, autism fuelled ramblings. Enjoy.

[Opening Scene in a forest with a car. Also Sam and Dean are there.] Sam: I told you not to fuck with my car! Dean: Fuck you, I didn't fuck with your car. Sam: This is why dad beat you as a child. [The two begin fighting, shouting unintelligible insults at each other which show their deeply messed up psyches as a result of their poor childhood.] [A vague monster appears, grabbing Dean tightly by the throat. He comes to him as a really really hot guy, and Dean actually doesn't seem to mind.] Monster: I know what you are. I know what you are really looking for. I know what you have been waiting for for all of these years. [Dean's eyes trail to the monster, looking at him brotherly and admiring his totally sick bod.] [A beat. Dean is about to open his mouth, his eyes trailing from the monster's to his lips before-] Monster: A brother. [Dean's expression falls. He's not so bricked up now, and in fact seems disgusted. Was it himself he was disgusted with? Or was it... his father? He goes to the nearest tree and punches it, his knuckles bleeding. He watches the blood fall. He thinks he deserves it.] [Cas appears, out of nowhere or something, or maybe he walks. It's probably a bit awkward at first to be honest. Dean is crying, or maybe he's not. He never cries, so it's a bit hard to tell.] [Cas looks at Dean with a vulnerable expression. He looks like the epitome of an open wound. Too soft for his own good. He puts a hand on Dean's, who almost seems to flinch at the touch.] [Another beat. The two are staring into each other's eyes. But it's not romantic, they're just good friends.] [Except not really. It's hard to love someone who doesn't want to know the truth about themselves.]

Cas: Are you okay, baby doll? [Dean is angry again.] Dean: I'm fine. Get your little fmaggot fingers off of me. Cas: Why won't you let me treat you like a companion? [Dean cries at the touch. Or maybe he doesn't.] Dean: I'm not worthy of healing. Cas: But I love you. We're brothers. [Dean is bricked up rn, and this is a total mood killer.] Dean: We're not brothers. [Sam is just kind of there. With a girl or some gaping hole in his heart just like his brother.]

Cas: We're companions. We are life partners. We are civil mates forever. [There is a lot of sexual tension right now, but it's actually a bit awkward and quite uncomfortable. The shuffling of Sam's feet on the leaves is a pathetic space filler.] [A beat.] Cas: You're my sweet cheese, man.

[ladyrandombox]

Looking through my old art I made so many pieces to try and work through/cope with all the feelings that last 3 episodes of Supernatural caused (there were so many). These 4 pieces are still some of my favorites even if they are old.

[thenameisgul]

‘something went wrong, dean. Something always goes wrong, you know that!’

‘yeah, and why does that something always seem to be you’

idk about y’all but this one piece of dialogue just makes me physically hurt everytime i see it in gifs, edits or the show itself

it’s such a cruel thing to say to anyone but especially to someone you care about so much, your bestfriend, someone who never really had much to begin with and just lost the most important person in his life apart from you

this just makes me hate dean (for a few brief moments) everytime. It’s so sad.