#just to make sam and dean being equally played by heaven and hell really really obvious

[shanastoryteller]

The boy with the demon blood is always watching him.

His gaze had been alternatingly reverent and despondent before Lucifer’s rise. After, it’s cold, appraising, and only when Dean isn’t looking. It reminds Castiel of the few times that Michael has set his eyes on him and it makes the place on the back of his back itch where his wings would be. Lucifer’s vessel should not remind him of Michael. It’s not right.

They’re sitting in a diner, a cup of coffee in front of him that he has no intention of drinking, Dean is in the bathroom, and Sam is staring at him again, lip pulled back just enough that Castiel can’t tell if it’s a grimace or a snarl. He is not well versed in humanity, but he wishes for this to stop. It’s distracting. “What is your problem?”

“You,” Sam says bluntly, which Castiel had not expected. “I don’t trust you.”

“Because your judgement in this area is without reproach,” he says, surprising himself. It’s just that Dean is predictable. Understandable. Sam is not. It’s frustrating.

That look on his face is almost a smile. “Exactly. I trusted you in the beginning. You’re an angel, a being of good, who brought my brother back to life. Why wouldn’t I?” He shakes his head, a faint look of disgust on his face that Castiel is used to seeing there.

He thought Sam’s self recrimination was wholly centered on his role in releasing Lucifer. He does not know what to do with the realization that some of it is directed towards him. “I am still all those things.”

“No,” Sam says. “You’re the good soldier who left my brother to rot. I tried to save him and couldn’t. I nearly destroyed myself doing it. You could have saved him and didn’t. You could have prevented all of this if you’d pulled him out before he broke the first seal. But you didn’t, and then you left him there for another ten years, letting Alistair sink his claws into him.” He leans forward. “My brother was only useful to you broken. I’m not going to forget that again.”

Anger rushes through him. Dean is often frustrating. Sam is infuriating. “I was following orders.”

He realizes too late that he’s only confirming Sam’s assertions. To his credit, he doesn’t appear at all satisfied with the admission. “That’s why you and Dean get along, you know. Two good little soldiers in a pod that rebelled too late and are suffering the consequences.”

Sam has not spoken of Dean like this, has not been anything but accommodating and sorrowful to his elder brother since killing Lilith. His description of their actions sounds too much like Lucifer for Castiel’s comfort. They’re nothing like him. It is Sam who is the devil’s foil. “What are you, then?”

“An idiot,” he says. “You and Ruby are the same, manipulating us both to start this stupid apocalypse. I know you let me out of the panic room, Castiel.”

He goes very still. There are several defenses available to him, but all only confirm Sam’s assertion that he’s a good little soldier that rebelled too late, that he was as Ruby. Perhaps this is where so much of Dean’s frustrations around his brother come from. He is not right, but it is difficult to find the words to prove him wrong.

“If you were going to try and deny it, that would have been the time to do it,” he says dryly. “If you hadn’t, the apocalypse would have been averted. I can’t kill Lilith if I’m dead and even if one of you had done it, it still wouldn’t matter. Lucifer can’t puppet a corpse. Over before it begins.”

Castiel means to choose his next words carefully. Instead, he says, “You have not told Dean.”

Sam shrugs, looking at the window, his eyes tightening in pain. “He needs something – someone – to hold onto right now. It can’t be me, so it’s you. But I’m watching you, Cas. Manipulate my brother again, and I’m not going to care how useful you are in averting the apocalypse or what it’ll do to Dean to lose faith again.”

“Why can it not be you?”

He looks over at him, startled. It’s nice to be able to be the one to put him off balance for once. “What?”

“Why can Dean not hold on to you?” he repeats. Despite every attempt from heaven and hell to prevent just that, it seems to him that Dean is holding onto his brother more tightly than ever.

Sam’s expression shuts down, but not before Castiel sees the tidal wave of grief there. “You didn’t know him before hell. You don’t know what you took from him by leaving him there.”

He’s back on uncertain territory. It’s the only kind he ever seems to be in with Sam. “Is he very different?”

Dean does not appear overly different from an outside perspective. His personality and priorities seem roughly the same as they were reported to be before hell. Traumatized, perhaps, but it’s not as if Dean is any stranger to that.

Sam laughs and Castiel flinches before he can think not to. “Our father’s words haunted him, you know. That he had to either save me or kill me. In some ways, selling his soul for me was a relief. Not only was it a complete rejection of that order, but it meant that if I did have to be killed one day, he wouldn’t be the one to do it. Not that he ever would, because people have tried to manipulate him into it before. Me included. So I guess you can take some sort of pride in it, being the one who succeeded.”

Castiel regrets starting this conversation. He thinks that Dean cannot possibly still be in the bathroom and wishes he would return. “You are not dead.”

“If you’d left me in the panic room,” Sam says. “I would be.”

That is likely true.

“It was perfect,” Sam says bitterly. “Me, strung out on withdrawal, alone and isolated and hallucinating and dying. Dean with all of his worst nightmares confirmed. Except he’s faced that before and it still didn’t end with me dead. He needed a push. He needed a way to save me or kill me that wouldn’t be his fault, his hands, that he could drink and hide from. And leaving me to detox alone in that room did that, gave him an out that he told himself he could live with.” He tilts his head, mocking and sharp, and Castiel would very much like to stop seeing Michael in Sam Winchester’s face. “But you never wanted me to actually detox. Not with Lilith still alive when I’d need years of training to be strong enough to kill her without it. You didn’t want me clean. You wanted me twisted so far around that I’d be easy to control.”

Zachariah had wanted that. Castiel hadn’t known. He was just following orders.

Dean might accept that explanation. Sam never will. He believes blindly following orders to be a weakness. It’s difficult to argue against it when he’s right. If Castiel had not followed orders he did not understand, they would not be here. But following orders is all he’s ever done.

“I should have known better,” Sam says. “That’s on me. Dean played his part too, but he’s got enough to deal with right now.”

“You intend to let him continue blaming you,” Castiel says. Dean’s mistrust and anger hurts him. It’s easy to see. Here he has the information to rid himself of it, at least partly, but he’s keeping it to himself.

His mouth twitches into something that’s almost a smile. “It’s me or him. He went to hell for forty years for me. I can spare him this.”

Castiel tries to imagine Dean’s reaction if he uncovers how close he came to Sam’s permanent death, how it was something he chose and could have prevented and did not because of actions and assurances that Castiel gave him.

Sam is an abomination. He is, also, human, and no amount of demon blood down his throat is going to change that.  

“Before hell, Dean might have forced me to detox, but not alone,” Sam says softly. “He never would have left me to die alone.”

He searches for something safe to say, something to extricate himself from this conversation. What he settles on is, “You and Dean’s relationship confuses me.”

Sam laughs again. Castiel doesn’t flinch this time. “He pushes me to leave and then blames me when I do,” he says, exhaustion leaking into his words. Sam often looks tired. Castiel has never wasted time wondering precisely why. Perhaps he should have. “It never occurs to him that if he just stopped pushing, I’d stop leaving.”

A self fulfilling prophecy. The apocalypse was supposed to be like that, except that in the end heaven and hell had needed quite a lot of work to get it started. Destiny isn’t as easy as Castiel had been told it would be. “Why are you telling me this?”

It’s that cold, assessing glance again. Comparatively, it’s almost comforting now. It’s better than the grief. It must be exhausting, mourning a man who’s right in front of him. “So you know to watch yourself, Cas. I’m looking properly now. And I see you for exactly who you are.”

It’s not an idle threat, not from Lucifer’s vessel, not from the man who killed Lilith, but there’s a shiver down his spine that’s not quite fear. He’s a low ranking angel, all things considered. Like a god on earth, but celestially insignificant. He is to take orders, to follow his father’s will and his brothers’ guidance and never stray from this well trodden path.

No one has ever seen him before.

[lol-jackles]

hey! so, I want your opinion on soulless!sam, because I think jared did a great job playing this other version of sam

Soulless!Sam was a great character. I loved that in the beginning of season 6, he wasn't just acting as a SoullessSam, he was acting as SoullessSam faking being the real Sam for Dean, and there were many times where he almost but not quite convincing pull it off.   Speaking as someone with a theater background, I was impressed with how Jared pulled it off as I wouldn't know how to approach that role. Often actors play the fake character fully as if they are the real character until the ta!da reveal.

First, what is a soul? In the SPN-verse, the soul is the person’s self.   We’ve seen the souls of Dean, Sam, and Bobby in Heaven and Hell and they appear to be no different from themselves on Earth. What makes up the self is the conscious, subconscious, and emotion, which I like to call the trinity.

When we see soulless people on the show, they give into their worse impulses because there were no trinity to hold them in check. Some feel free once unshackled of their soul, some shackle themselves to prevent hurting others, some make the cold calculation for the "greater good", and others rely on people they admire for guidance. When Sam, Donatello, and Jack lost their souls, they cycle through those four reactions.

SoullessSam felt he became a better hunter when unshackled by a soul, but he also let Dean get turned into a vampire and killed Robin to take way the monster's leverage. Skill and rationality does not necessarily make for a great hunter. It has to be a balance between knowledge and the heart in order to make the best possible decision under the circumstances. Sam is all about the heart and always listening because he wants to help. SoullessSam has no heart and only listens to figure out how to mathematically come to the best scenario, though without taking in the value of an individual life.

SoullessSam's worst impulse was to tell the truth without softening the blow because he no longer feels the love (or guilt or shame) towards Dean or others. But without emotion, Soulless Sam can't make decisions for himself because all arguments are equal; emotions are the tie breakers. Dean recognizes this when he saw how blindly SoullessSam followed their grandfather's order.  Then Sam left their grandfather to follow Dean even when he knew that Dean's endgoal for him was not in his best interest.

I was sympathetic for SoullessSam because he lived and experienced life, he's a fully sentient being and none of us could really blame him for trying to protect himself from being resouled, as he knew it would mean his death. In the end, Soulless Sam wasn’t evil, he just didn’t care.

.

Though SoullessSam said he did not love Dean, he still fell right back to the codependency pattern due to a lifetime of being brothers. It was basic Sam actually guiding Soulless Sam, not Dean. Sam has always taken responsibility for his actions (as those of others). Soulless Sam had access to all of Sam's memories, including his "it doesn't matter what you are, it only matters what you do" creed. It would have made sense for SoullessSam to adopt the creed that seems to be the heart of Sam's motivation and used it as his guide. And it can be reasonably argued that Soulless Sam is proof of Sam's inherently goodness. With Sam's memories and skills, SoullessSam could have done whatever he wanted and leave a trail of destructions. Instead he returned to the family business of hunting things and saving lives, despite the flawed execution of it.  

[thesernotthedroidsurlooking4]

just finished season 4 (rewatch) and gosh, you’re putting into words a lot of my own ponderings…

I have never, ever been able to watch this season without getting fairly mad at Dean on Sam’s behalf, especially during the last two episodes. That’s not giving Dean hate—he’s just acting in character, according to how his issues manifest. Both brothers are messed up, we know this. But it always feels like the show portrays Sam and Dean’s fight… strangely.

We can agree what the main arc of the season is, correct? That both Sam and Dean are getting manipulated away from each other: Dean by heaven, and Sam by hell. And when they clash, both must thus be coming from an at least somewhat compromised state. Both are right, both are wrong; this is what fulfills the thematic mirroring of their arcs. This plotline serves as a preparation for Dean being Michael’s vessel and thematic foil/parallel, and Sam being Lucifer’s. Both of these baddies are to serve as physical incarnations of each brother’s issues, weaknesses, and dark sides.

BUT. But it doesn’t quite feel framed in such an equal, mirroring way during Season 4. It feels like the show is endorsing Dean far more than Sam in the end, but this feeling can be so hard to pin down. It’s a real mindfuck, actually. How much are we supposed to agree with Dean? I can’t tell what the writers really think, either, but it feels like Sam is constantly being told that what he’s doing is wrong, that he’s “completely off the reservation.” This ends up being correct when he accidentally frees Lucifer. But Dean is being warned far less that his soldiers’ mindset and simplistic if-it’s-supernatural-we-kill-it attitude is playing right into the angels’ hands. According to the story’s own thematic logic, showing any bias towards one brother isn’t right. Sam’s utilisation of the demon blood is a true dilemma, and should be treated as such.

I’ve never been able to decide myself what was the right choice for Sam to make, without any knowledge of Lilith’s death being the final seal and all that. Sam’s been given a power that genuinely saves people, and leaning into it is their most effective way of fighting demons, by far. Season 4 is full of examples of this—Sam keeps saving their asses, and I can’t figure out another way for the Winchesters to avoid death or disaster in many of these episodes. The “problem” is that this power comes from a demonic source. That’s it. Even when we find out that Sam’s power booster is drinking demon blood, the show just… hasn’t given us a real reason to condemn Sam for using it other than “but demons.” Yeah, demons are bad and we shouldn’t trust them, that the show has given us evidence for. But what about this power of Sam’s, specifically, is bad? Sure, Sam’s been acting colder, more arrogantly, and more ruthless, but all of these traits started back in Season 3, before he was drinking demon blood. Those are standard Sam emotional issues for his arc right now, and we haven’t been given any evidence that the demon blood is responsible. The story only gives us three reasons, only near the end, why it was wrong: a) its addictive qualities, b) moral problems with sourcing it from demons who are possessing innocent people (which was only an issue in 4x22), and c) we’re told that too much demon blood will make sam less human and change him forever, which is followed up with Sam’s eyes going black while killing Lilith (also only something that happens in 4x22). All of these reveals happened later on, assuming good, intentional writing, to purposely keep fans guessing about whether Sam was in the right. And yet, before these reveals, the show kept repeating to Sam that he was wrong. It wasn’t just from Dean, but also happened with characters like Chuck. This setup makes it sound like we’re supposed to agree with Dean, who thus far only dislikes what Sam is doing because it it’s supernatural in origin, and not human. Are we truly supposed to just take Dean’s word for it, when the show has, in previous episodes, challenged Dean’s black-and-white thinking surrounding the supernatural in episodes like 2x03, with Lenore and Gordon? We shouldn’t, then, right? And yet the show keeps repeating his warnings to Sam, as though he’s correct (and seems to justify him using that episode with the rugaru, 4x02 or 4x03, I forget which).

So my real problem is, I guess, that the show doesn’t seem to fully commit. Which is it, huh? That Sam’s demon blood powers are a true dilemma and the audience must keep guessing as to whether Sam is in the right to use them, all the way up until the surprise reveal in 4x22 that Ruby had been manipulating him into freeing Lucifer? Or that Dean keeps warning Sam against becoming a monster, but Sam betrays him by refusing to listen?

… that’s it that’s my TED Talk uh have a nice day I guess

i actually. oh my god. it’s been so long that i’ve forgotten about the absolute insanity of s4. i’ve become acclimated to sam mistreatment by the show but i genuinely think s4 is SO fucking insane because like. it’s back when supernaturals good! and yet! sams narrative arc is INSANE! in a fascinating and yet genuinely awful and horrifying way!!! and like. is that intentional?? spn is a horror show surely it’s intentional but did they actually realise what they were doing can i realllly trust that? is it smart and meta because when you put thought into it it’s really fucking clever but did they actually or did they genuinely unconsciously think dean is the actual moral compass of the show and that disobeying him is blasphemy?? or is that an intentional writing choice a la family is hell a la god is a nuclear familial patriarch?? i like to think the latter but

like. supernatural is an experiment. an experiment in how many times you have to state something about a character, even if it’s directly Not What Happens and actually genuinely false, before a fandom will accept it as 100% true. an experiment in, well, if you never directly call out that your protagonist is an unreliable speaker and narrator, will your fans ever realise?

and the answer for the first is Pretty much you can just say it once - i think as soon as most people heard ‘dad said i have to save you or kill you’, they internalised it as Sam WILL go evil and Dean will have to save him or kill him and what’s more, Dean has the right to make these choices, because everything about Sam is obviously inherently Dean’s. nevermind that sam has always tried so hard to be good and his most ‘morally grey’ era in the show is during active manipulation and is still just because he is trying SO hard to do the right thing. and the answer for the second is They will never realise, because most fans still think that dean saying sam chose a demon over him means it’s what happened.

and i don’t even know if the writers knew what they were doing during any of that. i have to believe some did. hopefully most. but i don’t even know anymore late season sam writing has made me so much less optimistic. maybe they just believed dean was fucking correct

[oviids]

pls share some of your spn fic recs 🥺🥺

ok, a few things first:

followers and mutuals who do not have supernatural brainworms, kindly avert your eyes

i don’t normally rec or even read much fanfic any more but this is a CRISIS ok (cont.)

there is so. much. content for deancas out there and i have incredibly high standards, several ancient ao3 bookmarks, can speedread, and want to spare you guys the experience of wading through it all.

i also have a section for spn femslash since I was pretty into that back in the day (sadly a lot less fan content for this :/)

I don’t really like au’s or pure smut (I honestly usually just skim or skip those scenes) so if you’re mainly looking for that kind of thing this probably won’t be very helpful to you. jsyk.

i’m not great at describing stuff but i’ll do my best, i’ll also try and add tw’s when neccesary.

i wil try and keep updating this with any other decent fics i find, feel free to rec stuff too since i’m like 7 years behind.(edit 1/25/21) this is getting looooong so i’m going to start making another list on my spn blog rather than update this one

(edit 1/3/21) since this has gotten pretty long i’ve added rating/approximate word counts and marked my particular favorites with an asterisk.

Dean/Cas fic:

So Says The Sword*** - explicit/85k. FUCK its good...au/time travel where dean is not pulled out of hell by cas and says yes to becoming the michael sword. honestly could serve as an alternative to actually watching the show, if you want to get into dean/cas without actually doing that to yourself.

Fata morgana.*  - teen/6k, pst s9 finale. very bela centric and i love it, she finds cas looking for dean in hell.

Redemption Road -misc/600+k. an incredibly long fic from a collaborative writing group back in the day. canon divergent from the end of s6 on, has a cool take on godstiel and the leviathans, as well as the lovecratian mythos connection. ngl when i reread it i only made it about 28% in but imo the casual reader can actually stop around there, the rest concerns a lovecraftian apocalypse that is still good (i think i don’t remember it very well) but not required to enjoy the first half. if you prefer i have an ebook version i can send you on gdrive.

Someone Who's Feeling For Me* - mature/45k, s12. they run into lisa braeden and dean thinks cas is into her while cas thinks dean still likes her. treats lisa way better than the show ever did and the miscommunication is pretty funny rather than annoying.

a turn of the earth - mature/95k. time travel fic where cas from s10 keeps showing up in deans life from a few years before s1 to right before the hellhounds take his soul.  slow burn, good character study, and at one point cas punches the dad in the face and it rules.

On the Wings of War - teen/85k, canon divergent s5. dean accidentally becomes the Horseman of War. plays fun, fast and loose with biblical lore, michael has some rights.

Named - mature/95k, alternate s5. EXTREMELY blasphemous in a fun sexy way. manages to predict metatron almost to a T. there’s one major character death and its literally jesus christ, everyone is very sad about it and it sets the rest of the story rolling. an alternate interpretation of cas’ mission to raise dean from hell which had me on the floor. ngl its kind of misogynistic at points, but its from 2010 and tracks with late oughts-2010 spn (sorry anna the author did you dirty here:/).

The Girlfriend Experience - explicit/15k. uhhh i don’t normally rec or even read smutty stuff unless someone i know is specifically asking for it but this has stuff like sam trying to be a good ally and dean thinking holding hands with cas is ‘kinda gay :/’ minutes after having gay sex with him.

i crippled your heart a hundred times - explicit/19k, s8. cas confesses his feelings and dean spends a long time getting his head out of his ass about it. truly hits different after the actual confession, despite being written six years early it feels like its actually what could have gone down more or less if the writers weren’t talentless demons who hate us.

My Roots Take Flight** - mature/125k. reverse au where cas is a hunter and dean’s an angel...OR IS IT???? an alternate retelling of s4. tw for briefly being set in a psychiatric hospital/the hospital being mentioned somewhat frequently throughout the fic, plus more references to torture in hell and heaven than usual.

The One Thing You Can't Lose* - teen/4k.you know those posts about how cas is a super-strong super-tough ancient warrior but he just lets dean tug him around because he likes it? thats it thats the fic.

Hands, From Which All Things Are Built - teen/14k, post s8′s ‘goodbye stranger.’ cas is on the run with the angel tablet but keeps in touch with sam and dean by text, he and dean still manage to be terrible at Actual communication.

Autrement, Danger - or, The Account of an Exceedingly Long Day - mature/30k, post s11. a monster that takes the appearance of your soulmate leads to some wild miscommunications and dealing with years of repression, also dean gets to see cas’ true form which is always cool. tw for non-graphic mentions of underage sexual assault/sex work.

Down to Agincourt - mature/explicit/900++++k, endverse continuation. endverse!cas survives his encounter with lucifer and discovers another time-displaced dean from s7. i’ve only read the two of four parts but its really good, veeeeery slow burn, has a lot of fun oc’s and takes a rather surprising but (imo) entertaining and intriguing turn into Hellenic history and mythology. usual tw’s for endverse/endverse!cas but nothing graphic, it’s actually pretty light-hearted (relatively speaking of course).

Nothing Equals the Splendor** - explicit/8k, THEE finale fix it fic you’ve been waiting for! posits that the entire final episode was just a (very bad and lame) djinn’s vision.

like moses and batman and james dean - explicit/31k, post s8. explores dean’s trauma and internalized homophoba from his technically canon experience with sex work and its impact on his relationship with cas. the sex work itself isn’t really shown in any detail but it’s still a relatively heavy fic.

Crazy Diamonds - explicit/25k, s4/alternate s14. fresh-out-of-hell dean and dean from 10 years in the future are displaced from time and sent to each other’s present.

where the weeds take root - explicit/30k. au where the men of letters kick them out of the bunker and they accidentally move out into the country, get over their codependence and semi retire. featuring chicken coop building, sam volunteering at a dog shelter, gardening, and blissfully mundane domesticity.

No Resting Place - teen/6k. djinn dream fic, switches back and forth between cas’ dream of being married to dean and retired from hunting to the aftermath when he wakes up. tw for brief mention of suicide since, y’know, djinn dream.

any port in a storm - mature/52k. post s8 finale. cas and dean have to pose as a couple going through a rough patch for a case and actually deal with their emotional baggage, cas struggles with being human and metatron is up to stuff.

all this and heaven too* - explicit/7k. in the author’s own words ‘...a love letter to every trans person who ever projected onto Dean Winchester.’ absolutely unzipped me emotionally and theologically, its just. so good. tw for very brief mentions of internalized transphobia/dysphoria.

Because it is* - mature/6k, finale fix it. killing chuck does not bring back anyone back and the winchesters spend a very long time dealing with what they’ve lost, cas and dean SOMEHOW still manage to have signifigant communication issues even after the confession. tw for suicidal thoughts/brief attempt.

Vena Amoris and Other Old-Fashioned Bullshit* - teen/4k, s6. when cas fell for dean it automatically soulbonded/angel married them, shenanigans ensue when dean finds out during the angel’s civil war. funny and actually written back when s6 was airing so cas is still (or at least pretending to be) kind of an OP asshole which is fun.

Rinse, Repeat - teen/3k, s8. angsty character study of cas as he’s reprogrammed and trained to kill dean. not really dean/cas since its just cas’ pov of canon events but its beautifully written and ends with him snapping out of it through the power of love (also now a canon event!).

Emergence - explicit/59k, canon divergent after s11. dean meets a hunter he only recognizes as their friend claire novak’s missing father, but soon realizes he might be the answer behind the mysterious void in his memories and feelings (aka everyone’s memories of cas are completely wiped away for three years).

Cuckoo And Nest - explicit/10k, early established relationship/character study, cas tries to figure out how he fits into dean’s life and space in the bunker.

Build a Home* - teen/20k, canon divergent s12. sam and eileen are cute and turn the bunker into men of letters/hunters hq and everyone but cas moves in, mutual miscommunication issues and pining ensues.

Down in the River - teen/5k, early s8, cas prays to dean in purgatory while sam and dean try to figure out a way to get him out.

Teaching Poetry to Fish* - mature/52k, ?? BC through the entire series/canon divergent s14 and 15. retelling of crucial scenes throughout the shows timeline from cas’ pov, feat. actual fish and poetry.

the minor fall, the major lift - gen/4k, post confession/finale fixit. dean goes into the empty to save cas and runs into several old friends (and enemies).

With the Kisses of His Mouth* - teen/3k, gen later seasons. dean and cas keep kissing by accident.

Remaining Grace - explicit/109k, alternate s6. au where cas asks dean for help with raphael and dean, of course, does. tw for temporary major character death/semi-graphic depictions of alcohol withdrawal.

The face of heaven.* - teen/10k, au, dean is a regular guy and cas is a fallen star (think ‘stardust’, kinda).

Stories Are Made of Mistakes*  - teen/5k. newly human cas has trouble getting used to a human body and humanity in general, but still figures out that he and dean are A Thing before dean does.

Hurry Up And Wait - mature/21k, canon divergent s12. a fairyland and quite possibly LOTR related case comes up and dean goes full fanboy, mary is introduced to the wonders of the peter jackson adaptions, many references and comparisons (including between cas and dean’s ‘friendship’ and arwen/aragon). also charle is still alive and has just been doing fairy stuff this whole time.

There Are Many Things - explicit/28k, s9. cas is extremely lonely/touch-starved and trying to figure out this whole human thing, as well as where he and dean stand after being kicked out of the bunker.

It's A Long Life to Always Be Longing - teen/40k, post s11 finale. amara helps dean by putting him in a magical coma so he can finally get some much needed rest and show him possible futures for him, sam and cas. meanwhile sam and cas go on a roadtrip (or several) to find componets for a spell to wake dean up. really good sam and cas friendship, they actually talk about their shared lucifer trauma and stuff.

Non-Photo Blue - gen/2k, s4/5/alternate s5. fifty moments from cas’ memories of dean.

Tall Grass - explicit/57k, canon divergent post series. cas becomes the ultimate plant dad. feat the wayward sisters gang, cathartic character growth, fun oc’s, domesticity, and lots of actual botanical info-dumping.

on vessels - no rating/gen/2k. established dean/cas, cas tells dean about how he used to imagine what it would be like to have him as his vessel.

search for tomorrow on every shore* - teen/11k, post-finale (extremely derogatory). some angels in jack’s new heaven act out and dean gets temporarily resurrected in 2003 and runs into his younger self.

Architecture of the Minotaur’s Heart - explicit/45k, very canon divergent post s1. dean’s new house seems to have a life and mind of its own, while in his dreams he sees glimpses of a world and apocalypse that never came to be and an angel that looks strangely like his mysterious neighbor, cas. loosely inspired by the book house of leaves (which i highly recommend for fans of weird horror).

The Distance Of The Setting Sun - explicit/17k, post s5. established dean/cas relationship, team free will finally takes advantage of cas’ abilities to go on vacation around the world.

diamond star halo - teen/5k, s11. dean lets cas use him as a temporary vessel while he recovers from rowena’s spell, sam is a long-suffering third-wheel.

Make Known** - teen/16k, s6/7. dean struggles to understand how cas could have become his enemy and whether he ever truly knew him in the first place.

blunt little instrument* - mature/1.4k, post finale. dean finally confronts his father in heaven, very cathartic.

my heart a compass*** - teen/10k, post confession. the empty forces cas to re-experience his most regretted moments while dean tries to snap him out of it and bring him home.

A Crash Course in Someone Else's History - teen/11k, s6. cas from the very start of s4 is brought forward in time by s6!cas to distract the brothers from his and crowley’s plans.

The Cuckoo Father - mature/8k, s7 au. the woman who found cas in the river post-leviathans does not marry him bc he was sent to her by god or whatever, but actually identifies him as jimmy novak and sends him back to claire and amelia.

The Dead Dean Clause* - teen/5k, post alt s5 ending. team free will celebrates surviving taking down lucifer by getting blitzed, cas lies to a cop and gets an impromptu driving lesson. title/description sound dark i know but it’s actually very funny and light.

Suck It, Judy Garland - mature/20k, s12 (after the ‘i love you...i love all of you’ episode). cas and sam have to pretend to be a couple for a case and dean is NOT happy about it.

By Daylight and In Dream - teen/16k, s5. pre-dean/cas, dean invites cas to use his dreams to hide from the other angels. tw for very brief mention of a memory/dream of alastair sexually assaulting dean.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - mature/22k, post-canon. an actually happy (if sometimes bittersweet) heaven endgame written several years ago, though some details are rather eerily similar to the show’s ending.

heaven is a place on earth* - teen/2k. dean’s pov of some of the times cas left him behind throughout the show, and one alternate ending where he finally gets to stay.

I Cleanse The Mirror - teen/20k, alternate s6. dean’s body is stolen by an ancient elemental and his soul has to hitch a ride in cas’ vessel.

an exploration of gender; angelic*** - mature/4k. *oscar isaac voice* lets get into angel gender politics!! aka cas is trans.

Zenith - explicit/33k, s9. after 9x06 an angry witch curses cas with the ability to see supernatural beings and human souls.

La cucina. - gen/3k, alt s9. dean goes wild helping a newly-human cas find out what kinds of food he likes, or the early s9 domesticity we deserved!

Dean Winchester, Cocksucker at Rest***** - teen/7k, post-finale. john and mary finally come over for dinner and john reacts to dean/cas in a rather predictable fashion. SOOOOOOOOO good omg, its so funny and a little sad and very very cathartic. part of a series that has a few other really good short fics.

The Way You Didn't Go - teen/5k, s15. coda to 15.09, dean has nightmares about the moc!cas timeline.

On Drowning - teen/28k. dean saves cas after he nearly drowns, they both try and deal with the physical/mental fallout (aka the fic where thee iconic “you only touch me when you think I’m dead or dying” originates). tw for realistic depictions of drowning/triage/misc medical information.

The Thirty-Six Questions That Lead to Love* - mature/13k. claire has dean and cas pretend to be her gay dads for a case and they play the titular 36 question game, get mistaken for swingers, and birdwatch, among other things.

Assorted F/F stuff:

Deep Breaths* - mary/ellen, au where mary said no to azazel’s deal and let john stay dead, still becomes a milf.

Like Rebel Diamonds - krissy/claire, they become hunter gf’s on the hunt for cas to kick his ass for taking jimmy. not-so-stealth dean/cas as well.

To Ash and Bone - anna/ruby, same author as the previous fic (p much all of her stuff is good from what i recall). au where ruby is a witch and helps anna when she’s cursed.

Holy Clockwork Angels - jo/ruby, STEAMPUNK au with very cool worldbuiilding.

At Day's End - jo/anna (my fucking KINGDOM for more jo/anna content, the dean/cas parallels are allllll there), au where they are both at the camp in the endverse and gfs.

these posts - ok so not actually a fic but i’m now obsessed with this hannah/meg dynamic.

Tagelied - mary/ellen, the true story of how ellen got into hunting before angels interfered.

Hell's Bells** - meg/abaddon, alternate s8/9 where meg survives crowley’s attack with sam’s help and teams up with abaddon (who she has a sk year old crush on) to take back hell.

The Ecstasy of the Rose - anna/ruby, anna travels back in time to escape heaven and becomes a signifigant part of ruby’s old human life.

Angel Underground - anna/jo, kind of an urban fantasy au with a very intriguing premise (sadly its very short, i’d love to see more if this ‘verse).

Clover, Flame - billie/mary, billie was always the reaper that showed up to take mary after her death(s) over the years.

Drag Me To Heaven - anna/ruby, a variant on the ‘last night on earth’ thing with dean.

Come Home* - jo/anna, canon-divergent au where anna is the new waitress at the roadhouse and helps jo set up a (probably not really) haunted house for halloween.

[absandersons]

“Unity” and the Broken Boys

BOY Y’ALL BETTER SIT DOWN BECAUSE THIS IS AS LONG AS CAN BE AND I TOOK OFF WORK TOMORROW SO I’VE GOT TIME

This is....one of the best episodes in the show.  Yeah, in all 325 of them, this is hands down one of the best.

First of all, stan Amara for clear skin.

That silent treatment babey, right out the gate with the Angst.  Tbh Dean deserves it.

“Like I said, killing Amara, Jack dying...that’s the only way.”

“The only way.  Our one shot.  Our Last chance.  You ever get tired of saying stuff like that?”

“We don’t have to like it, alright?  But you and me, we gotta get it done.”

Amara is such a welcome energy in this whole episode.  She’s warm and understanding, whip-smart and probably more powerful than Chuck.  I love her.

Sam is a wonderful, understanding, loving dad.  I love him eternally.  He loves Jack so much, he’s trying so desperately to do what’s right for Jack but also what’s right for the world.  Jack made this choice, but he can’t live with it.  How do you support your child when their life is at stake?

“Come on man.  Blindly following orders, lying to Amara, sending her to her death. Does any of this feel right to you??”

“It doesn’t matter how we feel!  You know what?  Stay.  Stay.  Someone has to be the grown up here.”

“Yeah well someone has to keep fighting for Jack!”

“He knows what he signed up for!”

“Last I checked, we don’t give up on family.”

“Jack’s not family.”

Y’all should have heard the noise I made.  What a fucking line.

“I know how you feel about the kid, I care for him too, I do, but he’s not like you.  He’s not like Cas.  He’s just not.”

“I’m- I’m ready.”

You can see the regret, the heartbreak in Dean’s eyes.  You can see how he wants to take those words back the moment he said them, and for Jack to hear them?  It’s unthinkable.

Sam and Cas I’m just so fucking emo dude.

“Sam, you stayed behind to find another way huh?  I woulda done the same.”

AMARA

First of all, LOVE this structure.

Amara and Chuck have such a fascinating dynamic.  Rob and Emily do a great job (as they have all along) by clearly being siblings but...heightened.  You can just tell they both exude power, and the other is the only one they consider an equal.

“You and Dean had that whole weird...thing.”

“That wasn’t you writing?”

“Ugh, not that part.  Gross.”

What I took away from this is what I’ve suspected all along.  They HAVE free will, just not total free will.  Dean and Amara’s connection wasn’t Chuck, there are parts of the story he didn’t write.  Obviously, this comes into play later. 

I also have a hunch that Chuck doesn’t write romance.  I also think that in particular will come into play.

“Balance.  Something we’ve never tried before.  Creation and destruction, light and dark, brother and sister united again, but on behalf of one world, this world.  True balance.  The way it was always meant to be.  But you can’t.  You only care about your pleasure, your story.  Well, I guess that makes you the villain.”

“Villains get all the best lines.”

We see again and again this season, Chuck is irredeemable.  He doesn’t care about the angels, he doesn’t care about the world, he doesn’t care about anything.  He is a petulant toddler who has broken his toys. And when he realizes he’s trapped, he gets angry, he shouts and screams, completely at odds with Amara’s peace.

“You can’t hold me here forever.”

“I can hold you long enough.”

DEAN

Pain is the name of the game in this section homies.  Because not only are we dealing with Dean’s pain, we’re also dealing with Jack’s.  Jack says he understands why Cas and Sam mean more to Dean, but Dean clearly doesn’t, he, once again, wants to say more, but is stopped, still stopped by his fear: his fear of not beating Chuck.

Alright guys, gals, and non-binary pals.  Let’s talk about Adam and Seraphina.

Adam.  The first man.  And Seraphina.  The angel.

“My old lady.  She’s the only one who could put up with me all these years.”

Yeah okay.  Volume at 100 I get it lmao.

But also: Adam wants God dead not because he and Eve were kicked out of the Garden, but because he went after their sons.  The theme of protecting the children strikes again.

“Killing God is your plan?”

“Yeah, Billie’s been giving us a hand but Sera and me, this is our baby.”

This juxtaposed directly with Dean’s own pain at what he has to do to kill Chuck, to gain his free will: the cost of his child.

Adam’s rib.

And who else might get his ribs hurt, only to be likely healed by an angel?

It’s fine, that’s fine.  I’m fine with that.

“Jack, I don’t know how to explain it but, when I found out about Chuck, it’s like I wasn’t alive.  Not really.  You know like my whole life I’ve never been free, but like really free.  But now?  Now me and Sam, we got a shot at living a life, without all this crap on our backs.  And that’s, that’s because of you.  So, I want to say, I need to say...thank you, Jack.  Thank you.”

I’m gonna have to do a separate post about just Dean in this episode, because there is so fucking much to talk about, but there are a couple of things that I think are important:  Dean realizes how wrong he was, to say what he said.  He knows that it’s not true, this is the way he’s always coped with loss, by pushing the person to be lost away, but for Jack to hear it?  He can’t stand for that.

And:

Dean has finally pushed through the barrier.  He won’t be quiet in the face of his doubts anymore.  This is a breakthrough for him, and, of course, there are more to come.

SAM

Sam and Cas, my chaos duo.

The box, the inscription, the door.

Death’s library, filled with dead reapers.

And there it is.  The Empty.

It tells Sam the plan, the plan for Billie to take God’s place.  For everything to go back to the way it’s “supposed to be.”

This has always been the game, since season 13.  This is the longest of long games.

Sam fuckin Winchester, lying his way out of a confrontation with the Empty like the legend that he is.

He comes back with a new purpose: to stop Billie’s plan, and here’s where we get to the heart of the episode and maybe the heart of the season.

“You hear that?  Dean, brought to the edge of doubt.  His sense of duty, his rage winning out in the end.  And poor Sam, always gotta know everything.  Can’t leave well enough alone.  This is my ending, my real ending.”

The gun comes out, pointed at Sam.

Hmm...what did I say during 15x05?  Oh yeah, this.

And:

Dean would never survive killing Sam, but he’s willing to do anything, anything to earn his freedom.  His ending, where one brother kills the other and then kill himself.

Why, you might ask, did Sam not mention that the angels would be sent back to Heaven, why does he not mention Cas?  I’ll tell you why, or rather, Becky will.

Plus, Dean looks back at Cas IMMEDIATELY when Sam says that, when he mentions Eileen, and THAT’S the first time he hesitates.  He can’t lose Cas.  But at the same time, he’s willing to do anything to have his freedom.

“Sam we don’t have a choice, Jack’s about to blow!”

“We always have a choice!”

You know me, just sitting here thinking about choice, the ability to choose, and how that translates to their free will.

And Sam...I don’t think there will ever be characters I love as much as these.

“I don’t care if Billie gets what she wants!  I don’t man, I’d trade it all, I’d trade em all for Chuck.  In a heartbeat!”

“What about me?”

“You’d trade me?”

“Chuck has to die.  He has to!  Otherwise he’ll keep us tap dancing forever, and I can’t live like that man, I can’t live like that, I won’t!”

“I know you feel like that right now, okay? I know you do, but you gotta trust me.  My entire life, you’ve protected me.  From Dad, from Lucifer, from everything.  I didn’t always like it, you know?  But it’s the one thing in the whole world that I could always count on.  It’s the only thing I’ve ever known that was true.  So please, put the gun away.  Just put it away.  We’ll figure it out, Dean, we’ll find another way, you and me.  We always do.”

Okay I feel like this is going to be one of those scenes that I cry watching for years to come.  Because fuck.  After fifteen years they finally admit that not only did Dean protect Sam from Lucifer, but he protected him from John.  John.  On a par with Lucifer.

Dean and Sam have, for so many years, sacrificed themselves for the other.  Dean’s demon deal, Sam and the trials, every season they have fought to see who can die the quickest for the other.  But this?  This is them fighting to stop the violence, to stop from killing the big bad.  This is them growing, in our eyes, in real time.  Sam has always been able to get through to Dean when no one else had a prayer, but for Dean to listen, for Dean to take his words to heart, to stop the hunt for Sam, for their family, that’s how you know they do have free will.

(Btw Chuck’s eye effect when he dusted Amara was sick as fuck but I’m emo for my boys so.)

Chuck knows it’s a loss, he knows that his story has, once again, been thwarted by the boys making their own choices.  And he’s pissed, but in his anger, we get a bomb dropped on us.

“Spare me your contempt Castiel, the self-hating angel of Thursday.  You know what every other version of you did after “gripping him tight and raising him from perdition”?  They did what they were told.  But not you.  Not the one off the line with a crack in his chassis.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Also, just worth bringing up this one as well:

Every Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell.  Every one told him the same thing.  And yet, immediately, with this Cas and this Dean, something was different.  Because what has everyone seen about Cas, from the moment he met Dean?

And there’s our endgame people.  Laid out on the line.

But we ain’t done yet, fam.

We’ve talked about the handprint, but you know:

So there you have it, our prep into the “monumental” 15x18.  I have spec on that, of course, but I think a novel is long enough for this.

What to take away: Dean’s rage was always Chuck’s plan, they do have free will, their love for each other, for their family, is what will stop Chuck’s control, Death is about to come back with a vengeance, Cas’ deal is at play, and, most importantly, Castiel and Dean Winchester are a blind spot for Chuck, something he has never, not once, controlled.

[goldenraeofsun]

Enhanced Extraction Techniques

Also available at AO3

“Cas?”

Cas whirls around. If he was standing on a normal floor, his shoes would have squeaked with the abrupt turn. In the Empty, though, his feet don’t make a sound. “Dean?” he calls back, his heart soaring in his chest.

“Cas? Where are you, man?”

Cas spins in another circle, his eyes straining against the darkness. The oppressive blankness of nothing presses against his eyeballs like an almost tangible film. He tries again, “Dean?”

“Cas?”

“Dean!” Cas takes off in the direction of Dean’s voice.

“Are you there?”

 Cas walks faster, anticipation quickening his heels. “I’m coming!”

“I can’t find you!”

“I’m here!” Cas calls back desperately.

“I’m running out of time here, buddy! Spell’s not gonna last forever. Where the hell are you?”

Panicked, Cas breaks out into a run. “I’m coming, Dean!”

“Are you?”

Cas stops dead. If he was back on Earth, he would have fallen flat on his face with the momentum. He turns to his right, where Dean’s voice just came.

“Cas? You there?”

Dean’s voice definitely came from his left that time.

“I need you.”

Cas swallows. Dean’s voice is coming from directly in front of him now. Icy dread creeps up his spine, but he feels hot all over.

“You make it too easy, Castiel.”

Dean never calls him by his full name, not in more than a decade. He is not talking with Dean.

“Nobody is coming for you.”

Cas doesn’t respond. Shamed beyond reason, he just stands there because there is nothing else to do. He can’t hide from the Empty. The Empty is everywhere.

Black ooze, blacker than the surrounding darkness, bubbles up from the floor. The Empty resolves into Cas’s own face, to his surprise. He’d been expecting Dean.

It shrugs, a knowing smirk playing on its lips. “What can I say? If you’re determined to keep me awake, I might as well amuse myself.”

“Your sense of humor leaves much to be desired,” Cas says as tonelessly as he can manage.

The Empty crosses its arms over its chest. “My options are limited, aren’t they?” it says snidely. “I can’t put you to sleep, so I can’t sleep. I might as well make this experience as hellish for you as it is for me.”

Cas frowns. “You could always negate our deal. Send me back to Earth.”

The Empty laughs. “That’s not how it works. That was a one-way trip.”

Cas grinds his teeth. “Then it seems like we’re at an impasse.”

“An impasse requires two forces of equal power,” the Empty tuts. “And you, my little gnat, have no power in this equation. You are my plaything. What was it that Gabriel said? A thousand channels and nothing’s on. Except you.”

Before Cas can respond, the Empty disappears, dissolving into a tarry splatter and absorbing into whatever passes as the floor in this place. 

 * * *

Cas wanders. He used to sleep while he was bored, but the Empty truly reigns supreme in his dreams. Cas killed Naomi’s Dean facsimile a thousand times, a million times. He watched Dean rake leaves, Crowley whispering poisoned promises into his ear. He walked away as Dean hurts and rages silently behind him in the Bunker.

So Cas stays awake. He’s an angel. It isn’t hard.

Dean’s voice occasionally calls for him.

Cas ignores it.

He wanders for what seems like miles, like hundreds of miles. Nothing ever changes in the Empty. With every step forward, he meets the same bleak blackness. The closest comparison in his long memory is the fraction of a second before the Big Bang - there was emptiness then too, but it was filled with a pregnant sense of promise. In the Empty - nothing.

Until.

Dean is running towards him.

Cas blinks a few times to make sure, even though his vision is perfect.

“Cas,” Dean breaks the silence first, “I found you.”

“Dean,” Cas breathes - any louder, and Dean will hear the trembling. “You’re here.”

“The real deal, sweetheart,” Dean says with a wink. “Now, come on. We’re getting out of here.” He takes off in the direction he came from, glancing behind him to check on Cas.

“We are?” Cas asks, following.

Dean throws him a disbelieving look. “Of course, dude. Sam and Jack are prepping the spell to get us back to the Bunker. We got Chuck by the short and curlies, but we’re one power player short. So we gotta get a move on.”

“So you need me?” Cas asks.

“Your mojo is the ticket,” Dean says with a little grin. “Chuck wiped all the angels off the Earth except Michael. And that dick isn’t answering our prayers, so you’re our next best bet.”

The joy at seeing Dean wavers. “I am?” he asks haltingly.

Dean shrugs. “We gotta work with what we have. And we just remembered you were here, out of Chuck’s reach. Our own spare angel!”

Cas barely holds back his flinch. Hunching in on himself, he mutters, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Don’t worry,” Dean assures him, misreading his reaction completely. “We have a plan.”

Cas sighs. “Of course you do. What is it?”

“Sam found a spell,” Dean says. “It’ll rip Chuck apart, and, since Amara’s inside him - which, gross - it’ll maintain the balance when the spell takes her apart too.” 

Dean stops walking.

Cas looks around, but nothing sets aside this patch of emptiness from any other. No illuminated rift, no magic symbols, no X marking the spot - nothing.

“The catch is,” Dean says as he turns to Cas, his face regretful, “the spell needs an angel’s grace.”

In a blink of an eye, an angel blade drops into Dean’s palm.

Cas blinks. No beings but angels can manifest that particular weapon.

Dean raises the blade, fingers flexing on the handle. “You know,” he says conversationally, “Now that I think about it, we don’t actually need the angel himself - just the battery.”

Cas stands his ground, his eyes darting over Dean’s face, taking in every nuance and tell.

“I told you once,” Cas says warily, a horrible foreboding coming over him, “I’m always happy to bleed for the Winchesters.”

“Happy to hear that, Cas,” Dean says, his face impassive, “because you’re gonna bleed a lot, not gonna lie.” He shoves the blade in Cas’s chest, right above his heart.

Cas staggers back from the blow, pain and shock radiating out from the bloodless wound.

Dean raises his eyebrows, his mouth curling into a mocking smile as Cas meets his smug face. “What, were you expecting to go poof? We’re in the Empty,” he throws its hands wide, “everyone’s in stasis here, including you.”

Cas yanks the blade out of his chest, but it - and Dean - turns into black goo before he can stab anything with it.

 * * *

The Empty doesn’t mimic Dean next. Instead it takes Meg’s shape, Samandriel’s, Duma’s. Every one of the thousands of angels Cas killed up in heaven.

And there’s no escape. Cas can do his best not to listen, but if he retreats too far into himself, it almost counts as sleeping. With the Empty’s nudging, his thoughts will veer into his worst regrets, sooner or later. 

The Empty is in the middle of lecturing him in the form of Balthazar, when it explodes in a burst of light and sound.

Dean Winchester stands in the aftermath.

“Come on,” he says roughly. He strides forward to grab Cas’s hand and tug him in the other direction. “That bomb doesn’t last forever.”

“Dean?”

“Who else?” Dean yanks him sharply to the left. “This place didn’t turn your brains to scrambled eggs, did it?”

“I don’t think so,” Cas says shakily. “Dean are you really...”

“What?”

Cas can’t help looking down at their clasped hands. A fleeting thing, barely more than a glance. Still, Dean drops Cas’s hand like it burned him. “You good to run?” he asks shortly.

Cas barely nods before Dean takes off. They hurtle through the Empty, their rapid footsteps impossibly silent. Dean’s breath comes in sharp pants, and Cas’s useless wings ache, not for the first time, to fly them to their destination.

“Dean,” Cas starts, and Dean slows. “Where are we going?”

“Where I left my stuff,” Dean says shortly. “The spell to get us out of here needs a shit-ton of crap, and I couldn’t haul it all over this goddamn place while I was trying to find you.”

“How did you know your way back?”

The corners of Dean’s mouth lift in a faint smile. He points to the floor. “M&Ms.”

Cas squints at the ground, and, sure enough, they are following a trail of tiny candies. “Ingenious,” he murmurs.

“Hey, it worked with a Wendigo,” Dean says, shrugging. He directs them in a few more twists and turns before Cas sees Dean's duffle bag in the distance, topped with a bright yellow bag of M&Ms.

As they get closer, Dean pulls out an angel blade from inside his jacket.

Cas balks. 

Dean shoots him a puzzled look as he hands it to him. “It won’t kill anything here, obviously,” he says, unzipping his bag. He pulls out a copper bowl and bundles of herbs, “But having a weapon’s never a bad idea in unknown dimensions.”

“Yes, Dean.” Cas surveils their inky surroundings, already on high alert for any trespassers.

“Watch my back, okay?” Dean glances over his shoulder. Various ingredients get dropped into the bowl with outsized clangs and dribbles that seem to echo in the void around them.

Cas stays vigilant.

“This was easier than I thought it would be,” Dean mutters as the bowl’s contents start to smoke.

“Don’t jinx it,” Cas mutters out of the side of his mouth.

Dean chuckles under his breath. “I didn’t think angels believed in jinxes.”

It’s not like Cas has been especially angelic these past few years. He says shortly, “I’ve found you can never be too careful.”

Dean hums his agreement. “Need your blood for this part,” he says, shuffling over to make room. “Wait,” Dean says before Cas can press the blade againt his skin.

“Yes?”

“This is the last step,” Dean says seriously. “Once your blood goes in, it’s liftoff. So I wanted to get a couple things straight before we’re back in the Bunker.”

Cas doesn’t need to breathe, but if he did, his breath would have hitched in his chest at the closed-off look on Dean’s face. “Of course.” 

“What you said - what you told me,” Dean starts, his voice hard, “before you got sucked to this hellscape.” He drops his gaze to the bowl cradled in his hands, “That’s not me.”

Cas presses his lips together, struggling to keep his face impassive. Once he regains control of himself he says, “I did not expect you to reciprocate when I told you about my feelings for you.”

Dean actively recoils at the mention of feelings. He gives the bowl a little toss, and a few of the contents spill onto the floor. “Just, forget it,” he says brusquely, gathering everything up again.

“Dean-”

He turns to Cas, his eyes blazing. “But - you know what? I can’t forget it.”

Cas opens his mouth, but Dean is not done.

“How could you offload all that shit on me right before you fucked off to parts unknown?” he demands, voice rising in anger and volume. “Of all the goddamn things you could have said to me - that takes the fucking cake. You were my best friend -” he breaks off, shaking his head. “Worst moment of my goddamn life.”

Cas takes a step back, a sickly horror trickling down his spine. “I didn’t think-”

But Dean’s not listening. “I had serious doubts about coming here at all,” he continues, and the last Dean had stabbed him in the chest - how is this so much worse? “But Sam gave me those goddamn puppy dog eyes, and don’t even get me started on Jack-”

“I understand,” Cas interrupts stiffly. He inhales a deep breath he doesn’t need and continues, “Once we return to the Bunker, I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Probably for the best,” Dean mutters.

Cas cuts his forearm, watching with perverse fascination as the blood wells up and drips into the bowl waiting below.

There’s a violent burst of light and sound.

In the aftermath, Cas can only make out Dean’s mocking laughter. Before Cas can say a word, it turns into Meg’s delighted giggles. And then Gabriel’s howls of mirth.

 * * *

Cas sleeps after getting deceived for the third time. Anything is better than seeing the smug face of the Empty, whether it’s wearing Dean’s face, Gadreel’s, or Ruby’s. 

He breaks the wall in Sam’s head.

He lets Lucifer possess him in a futile plan.

He beats Dean to a bloody mess for the Angel Tablet.

Occasionally, the Empty grants him release, and Cas gets to deliver a bad joke to Uriel in Mesopotamia or Dean calls him a baby in a trenchcoat in a diner.

Time passes. Cas has no idea how long. There’s no sun - no moon - no cycling of the heavens. Only emptiness.

He gets shaken awake.

Cas blinks up at a pair of very familiar green eyes. “Dean,” he says, more or less resigned.

“Jesus,” Dean says as he sits back on his heels, “Way to make a guy feel welcome. I’m here to save your sorry ass, in case you were wondering. A full week of tearing my hair out over how to get you outta here, and this is the thanks I get.”

Cas sits up. “My apologies,” he says tentatively as he studies Dean’s face. There’s no sign it isn’t really Dean.

Then again, none of the others showed signs either.

Cas gets to his feet, asking, “Are you alone?”

Dean glances around them warily. “Yeah, Sam and Jack are keeping the portal open in the Bunker. They wanted to come,” he says, his eyes raking over Cas’s face, drinking him in. “They’ll be over the fucking moon to see you again.”

Cas swallows. “And you?”

“I -” A dull flush comes over Dean’s cheeks. He looks away.

Cas’s face shutters. “Right,” he says as he stands in front of Dean. “Now what?”

“Hey,” Dean says, reaching out to grasp his left shoulder, a mirror of the mark Cas left on him so long ago and so recently. “I missed you too. You have to know that.”

Worst moment of my life.

Cas looks away, Dean’s own raised voice echoing in his head.

“Hey,” Dean says again, gentler this time. His green eyes bore into Cas’s face. “What’s going on in that celestial brain of yours?”

The words catch in Cas’s throat, a lump of embarrassment and fear keeping them there. Embarrassment that the Empty deceived him. Fear that the Empty was right.

“Look, I know we didn’t leave things on great terms,” Dean says awkwardly, “and maybe this isn’t the best place to talk about it, but I’m so fucking happy to see you, man.” He chuckles ruefully. “’S making me lose my goddamn mind.”

Even if it’s only a facsimile of Dean - and there’s no way to tell for certain - seeing his face not contorted in anger or mockery is like a balm on Cas’s soul. If he had one, that was.

“About what you said before you got taken-” Dean starts.

Cas’s heart sinks.

“No,” Dean says, his voice low and gentle, “listen to me. I get that happiness for you might just be in the being, but for me-”

“It’s fine, Dean,” Cas interrupts. “I meant that, truly. You don’t have to-”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean says, smiling slightly, “You’re not making this easy are you?”

Cas bites his tongue to keep from contradicting Dean again.

“As I was saying,” Dean continues pointedly, his green eyes shining, “For me, happiness isn’t in the being - whatever the hell that means. It’s in the goddamn having.”

Cas bites his tongue harder, the pain hardly registering against the burst of hope fluttering wildly in his chest. “Dean,” he forces out, “You can’t mean…”

“Cas,” Dean starts, and Cas’s heart breaks - or mends. He can’t tell. He has no idea who he is talking to, and it’s, to borrow a phrase from the real Dean, an epic mindfuck.  

“Cas,” the Dean standing in front of him repeats, and Cas’s gaze automatically draws back to his face, “Good things do happen.”

Cas chuckles wetly. He has no choice but to say, “Not in my experience.”

Dean takes a step closer, far into the personal space he’d shown Cas so many years ago. Brows drawing together, he raises a hand to cup Cas’s face. “Someone told me a while ago that having faith was important. Seems you’re a little short there, buddy.”

Cas tries to duck his head, but Dean won’t let him. Eventually, he admits, “My faith has been tested recently.”

“But you didn’t give up, right?” Dean asks, leaning in close enough that Cas can feel the warmth of his breath in the air between them.

Cas shakes his head minutely. “No,” he murmurs, “not entirely.”

“Good,” Dean says, pausing just shy of Cas’s mouth. Waiting.

Cas steels himself and closes distance.

Just before their lips touch, Dean implodes in a burst of inky ooze.

 * * *

Cas breaks several knuckles on the floor of the Empty. There are no walls to punch, no blade to send heads rolling. Cas works with what he has.

The real Dean would probably approve.

Dean shows up again before too long. This Dean goes so far as to tell Cas he loves him.

Cas turns his back on Dean’s heartbroken face. He refuses to engage.

He wanders instead.

* * * 

Cas hears the footsteps before he sees his next Dean.

“Cas!” he pants, “Thank fuck. I thought I was never going to find you.”

Cas merely sighs.

Dean makes a face. “Way to roll out the welcome wagon,” he says, clearly offended. “I would’ve thought you were sick of this place by now.”

Cas purses his lips. “I am.”

“Shocker,” Dean says with a little smile. “Look, we don’t have a lot of time, so you gotta follow me.”

Cas doesn’t budge. He’d rather roam this place for eternity than suffer at the hands of another Dean facsimile. And he had thought he saw enough of them under Naomi’s tutelage. He’d been so naive.

Dean stares at him like Cas just stripped naked and danced the macarena. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not real,” Cas says bluntly.

Dean gapes. “Of course I’m real! Chuck’s de-powered, and Jack… well, it’s a long story. Bottom line: nobody’s pulling our strings but us.”

Cas lets out a derisive laugh.

Dean’s eyebrows rise, but he barrels on, “So it’s time to get a move on. Up and at ‘em, sunshine.” He jerks his head off to the right. 

Cas stays where he is. “No.”

“What the hell?” Dean has the gall to tug on Cas’s sleeve like he’s a wayward toddler. “Come on. You’re not making any sense.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Cas retorts. It’s not his best rejoinder, but he’s been very stressed lately.

Whatever Dean was about to say dies on his tongue as he stares at Cas in confusion. “What’s wrong with you?” He shakes his head before Cas can respond, saying, “Doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out later. But now, you’ve gotta come with me.”

Cas levels him a flat glare. This one is more stubborn than the last, more like the real Dean. “Why should I?”

“Because you don’t deserve to be stuck here?” Dean says, gesturing to the void around them. “You saved the world, Cas.” He swallows. “You saved me. Getting you out is the least we can do.”

“Because you need me to take on Chuck,” Cas says.

“No?” Dean says, his eyes narrowing. “I already told you, Chuck’s off the playing board.”

“Because you feel guilty about leaving me here.”

“No - wait, I do, but,” Dean breaks off, irritated, “you know what I mean.”

Cas doesn’t, so he continues in the same vein as before, “Because you love me.”

Dean hesitates. “I’m working on it.”

Cas snorts. At least the last Dean had the balls to say it. Many times. While crying.

“What?” Dean throws up his hands. “You just sprung it on me, dude! I didn’t even know angels could feel things like that, and it took me by surprise, okay? I’m only human, and sometimes we need time to get used to ideas. Like when we found out Snooki was a demon. Yeah, the signs were there, and it makes sense, but still - you sometimes need it spelled out for you.”

Cas pauses. None of the other Deans had referenced pop culture. “How long ago was this for you?”

“Since we summoned Snooki?” 

At Cas’s icy look of disdain, Dean hedges, “A month? Give or take.” He glares. “First we had to deal with Chuck, and it took a while to find a spell to get here. Remember, we didn’t even know this was a place before you died the last time. The Men of Letters weren’t a shit ton of help, for once.”

Cas crosses his arms over his chest.

“Just… hear me out,” Dean says. “There’s a portal to get us home. Sam and Jack can’t stall the Empty forever.”

That was new. “Jack and Sam aren’t in the Bunker?”

“No,” Dean says as he takes off in the opposite direction, all but forcing Cas to follow to find out more. “They’re up in Heaven.”

“Why?”

“Because the Empty can’t get to Earth without a summoning spell, which, as far as we can tell, doesn’t exist?” Dean says, checking over his shoulder to make sure Cas is still within earshot. “But you made that fucking stupid deal in Heaven, so we knew it could at least travel there. Jack zapped Sam to the Pearly Gates, and they’re hopefully making a distraction while I get you out.”

Still not entirely convinced, Cas asks begrudgingly, “And where are we going?”

“A portal,” Dean says confidently. “This place is a little like Purgatory, apparently. If it senses a human here, it’ll create a portal to spit them out again.” He flashes a grin over his shoulder. “So here I am, 100% genuine human to bail your ass out.”

“Thank you?”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean says with a wink.

Cas scowls. The first Dean had winked at him too.

“Jesus, tough crowd,” Dean mutters as they head further into the Empty.

Cas scans the ground, but there are no small candies lining the way. “How do you know where to go?”

“Turns out, Sam could find a spell for that,” Dean says as he holds up his left hand - clutching his amulet. The Empty must have really hunted around in his memories for that one, even more so than the Wendigo case. He hasn’t seen the real amulet in nearly five years. “It heats up when I’m on the right track towards the exit.”

“So no M&Ms?”

Dean turns to him. “I told you about that?”

Cas stares straight ahead, willing his face to fall into an expressionless mask. The real Dean had told him about the Wendigo over dinner with Sam and Mary while she was still alive, or the Empty wouldn’t be able to use it as inspiration now.

Dean shakes his head, smiling. “Man, I haven’t thought about that case in forever.” He glances at Cas, his face sobering. “You really don’t believe this is real?”

“No.”

He can’t. Not again.

Dean sighs as he steers them slightly to the right. “Come on, I’m almost getting third degree burns from this thing. We must be close.”

Sure enough, a blue swirling portal comes into view, a pinprick of light in the distance at first, elongating into an exact replica of the Purgatory exit as they approach. 

“Finally,” Dean mutters, his face impassive. He  turns to Cas. “Just… don’t stay behind,” he grimaces, “again.”

This version has been the most true to Dean - less callous than the first, more caring than the second, more guarded than the third. It will hurt the most when this one falls apart. Maybe it would be better if Cas heads it off at the pass instead of letting the whole painstaking ruse play out all the way through.

If the Empty could get it over with, Cas will go back to sleep. Anything is better than this torture.

Cas takes a step back, away from the portal. “This is pointless-”

“Jesus Christ, Cas!” Dean throws his hands in the air. “I don’t get it at all. You don’t think you deserve to be saved?”

Cas gapes at him.

Dean continues heatedly, “If an ex-demon with anger management problems and rap sheet a mile long deserved to be saved, I think a legit angel should get the same.”

Cas shakes his head. “I’m hardly a prime example of an angel anymore.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “Have I ever cared about that?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Glad we can agree on something,” Dean cuts him off. “Now, are you going to go through the portal or am I gonna have to drag you? I’ll do it,” he threatens. “Don’t test me.”

Cas wavers. Everything in him says to follow Dean. But this isn’t the real Dean - this is the Empty waiting for the glorious moment when it can yank the illusion away, leaving Cas a little more broken than before.

Dean’s eyes narrow. “Fuck you,” he spits, “You can’t trust me just a little-”

“Trust?” Cas echoes as he strides forward to grab the lapels of Dean’s jacket, his voice rising in a mixture of outrage, desperation, and heartache, “You want me to trust you? After you’ve lied to me, deceived me - after you stabbed me, after you told me I put you through the worst moment of your life the last time you saw me, after you made me think you returned my feelings only to - only to-”

Dean shakes his head slowly. “But I didn’t do any of that.”

“You did,” Cas says fervently, shaking Dean a little - or maybe that’s his trembling hands. “You did - you’ve been putting me through hell since I got here, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you.”

Dean’s expression hardens. “You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, I do,” Cas swears. “I’m done pretending.”

Dean his eyes flicking down to Cas’s mouth. “What do you know,” he breathes, “so am I.”

Cas freezes, waiting for Dean to dissolve into a puddle of goo in his hands.

Dean kisses him instead.

At the first touch of Dean’s lips to his, Cas jerks back in surprise and horror.

He falls straight into the portal. 

The Empty vanishes in a blur of too-bright light.

 * * *

Cas comes to in the middle of a field. The sun shines overhead. Noon, Cas registers distantly as he looks around. Dean’s sprawled on the prairie grasses next to him, already waking up judging by the groaning noises.

“Dean?”

Dean opens his eyes, glances at the sky, and closes them again. “Oh great, we made it.”

Cas tentatively picks his way closer to Dean’s side. He stands over him for a moment, shuffling to the side so he doesn’t block the sunlight falling on Dean’s face. “We’re on Earth.”

“Well, it’s sure as shit not Mars,” Dean grumbles, eyes still closed. “Are you watching me right now? I feel like you’re watching me right now.”

Cas stares around the field. “Not anymore,” he says, and a genuine breeze blows against his face. What a marvel.

“‘S okay,” Dean says as he wiggles a little on the grass, getting more comfortable, “’M used to it.”

Cas turns to him. “It’s really you.”

“The real deal, sweetheart,” Dean cracks his eyes open, one corner of his mouth lifting into a lopsided smile. “You believe me now?”

“This could be the most elaborate ruse yet.”

Dean lifts his head up. “Seriously? You dick, I did not haul ass all the way-”

“I don’t really believe that, however,” Cas says before Dean can work himself up too much.

“Good.” He meaningfully thumps the grass next to him. “Sit. You’re giving me serious Law & Order vibes.”

Cas’s brow furrows. “I don’t get that reference. I know about Law & Order-”

“And how does every episode of Law & Order start?” Dean interrupts, “With someone standing over a dead body in a field.”

Cas takes a seat. “Not always a field. Most episodes show corpses in urban areas, or, once, a yacht.”

“Pretty sure it was more than once. I hate procedural cop shows.”

“They are very formulaic,” Cas admits, stretching out his legs, “and lack the drama of soap operas.”

“I’m just saying, if a long lost sibling doesn’t pop out of the woodwork or if the main character isn’t killed off at least six times, is it really worth watching?”

Cas levels him a flat look. “Dean, all those things have happened to you.”

Dean snorts. “At least none of us got amnesia.”

Cas rolls his eyes. “Speak for yourself.”

Dean turns his head to stare at him, a wide grin spreading across his face as he laughs. “Oh shit, you're right. How the hell did I forget?”

“Because of supreme irony, most likely.”

It takes Dean a moment to get it, but when he does, he laughs even louder.

Cas doesn’t have anything to add, so he lets the conversation peter off into silence, listening to Dean’s even breathing and the grass rustling in the gentle wind.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Dean says in an undertone.

Cas turns to him. Dean’s eyes are closed again, but everything else about him radiates a quiet tension Cas might’ve missed anywhere else. But here, in this field, nothing prevents Cas from honing on Dean’s whole being with everything he has. “What do you mean?” he asks carefully.

“I dunno,” Dean says, his face scrunching up, “I thought it would be more awkward. But… it doesn’t feel any different.”

Cas blinks. “Why should it?” he asks, and though he’s not definitively sure what Dean means by ‘it’, he has a very strong suspicion.

Dean shoots him a pointed look. “Because you don’t tell someone you love them and expect everything to be OK after.”

Cas lays down next to Dean. Staring up at the wispy clouds overhead, he says, “If it changes anything, I didn’t expect to be around for the after part.” Dean’s head turns to look at him, but Cas can’t bring himself to see whatever expression is on his face. “If you’d like for us to go our separate ways after this, I understand.”

“You stupid bastard,” Dean mutters vehemently, “for the last goddamn time, I did not piss off the immortal Blob just to tell you to go fuck yourself in person.”

Cas inhales a slow breath, breathing in the dirt, wildflowers growing nearby, and Dean. “You kissed me,” he says.

“You said you loved me,” Dean shoots back.

“Did you mean it?”

“Did you?”

Cas grimaces as he turns his head to face him. “I thought it was obvious.”

Dean swallows. “No, it wasn’t,” he says quietly, “but I’ve never been good at that stuff.”

Cas squints at him. “You are the most emotionally intelligent man I’ve ever met.”

“What?”

Cas rolls his eyes. “You expertly navigate and manipulate people’s emotions to get them to talk to you, open up to you, have sex with you,” he lists. “It’s extraordinary to witness.”

Dean makes a choking noise. “Dude,” he says, which tells Cas absolutely nothing. A few more clouds pass by before Dean speaks again. “I guess the signs were there - with you. But I didn’t want to put them together.”

“Why not?”

Dean shrugs, his shoulders scraping almost inaudibly against the soil and grass stems. “Just didn’t.”

“Then that’s why I didn’t tell you. But, Dean-” Cas breaks off. This part of the conversation, despite what Dean said earlier, does not feel the same as others between them. 

Dean’s eyes flick to his. “Yeah?”

“You kissed me.”

Dean inhales a sharp breath. “I did,” he says at last.

Cas waits, but Dean doesn’t elaborate. “Was it just a ploy to get me to leave the Empty?”

“No.”

Cas grimaces. Not for the first time, his life would be so much easier if Dean could communicate without speaking in riddles or hiding every third word he wanted to say. “Dean...”

“I told you I’m working on it,” Dean says defensively.

Cas closes his eyes. “What does that mean?” he asks, his voice strained.

“It means I’m working on it,” Dean says shortly. But before Cas can press him further, he lets out an explosive sigh. “It means I don’t want to hear any more goodbyes from you. It means - it means that kiss wasn’t too bad, right?”

“I thought you were a fake version of yourself created to torture me for eternity,” Cas says flatly.

Dean props himself up on his elbows. “So all I’m hearing is there’s room for improvement.”

Cas rolls his eyes as Dean scoots closer, peering down at him. “I suppose that’s one way you could look at it.”

“Would you wanna... do something like that again?” Dean asks, his expression confident while his voice is anything but.

“Only if you want to,” Cas says seriously.

Dean licks his lips. He nods once, the movement stilted.

“Should I sit up?” Cas asks, frowning, as he half-lifts his head. “Or do you want to lay back down-”

“Cas,” Dean says impatiently, “it’s kissing we’re talking about here, not Twister.”

“I have played that game before.”

“Yeah, I remember now,” Dean says, a tentative smirk hiding in the corners of his mouth. “You ever do it naked?”

Cas frowns. “There was a strict policy against nudity in the psychiatric ward.”

Dean ducks his head, laughing silently. His forehead lands on Cas’s sternum, his breath warming Cas’s chest from the outside in.

“You were trying to say something arousing,” Cas says, a beat too late.

Dean shakes his head, grinning. “Something like that.”

“I would like to play naked Twister with you.”

Dean’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Glad to hear it,” he says as he leans over Cas. Cas goes a bit cross-eyed to keep him in view until Dean murmurs, “Relax. ‘S just me.”

In the instant before their lips meet, Cas half-expects the whole world around him to splatter apart in a tidal wave of black, otherworldly goo. But Dean is gloriously solid, gloriously human, as he cradles Cas’s half-raised head, his fingers tangling in his hair. 

The midday sun shines; the grass whispers in the wind; and Cas is saved.

[hen-of-letters]

Series 15 gives all of the characters you could ever care about their worst possible endings, but presents these endings as somehow good or satisfying or acceptable.  Here's a list.

The short version: they're Chuck's endings, and Chuck is a bad writer.  

None of the characters can escape the fate set out for them or break the cycle of trauma begun by Chuck.  The show itself doesn't even realise how truly awful these endings are - it dresses up a tragedy in pie gags and pretty colours and calls it a happy ending.  And in order to inflict these worst possible endings on its characters, the narrative has to be twisted and contorted in the most absurd of ways.

So, onto the list:

Adam: Forgotten and left to languish in the pit, he's finally freed, only to suffer an anticlimactic offscreen death and be forgotten again.  Michael, his only companion for so long, is also killed off.  In the finale, blood family seems to be all that matters - and yet he isn't mentioned.

Alternate Kaia: She helps rescue Kaia from the Bad Place, but chooses to remain there to face certain destruction rather than return to earth with Kaia, Dean and Sam.  This world is so hostile to her that death is preferable.  Her horrible, pointless death stands as a powerful statement about the real harm caused by exclusion, but the text doesn't seem to acknowledge the full horror of this.  Her death isn't remarked upon; it seems to suggest that both Kaia and her double are returned to their rightful places.  It's just one example of the show creating awful endings without seeming to understand how awful they truly are.  (I rant a lot more about Alternate Kaia here.)

Amara: After being betrayed and locked away for millennia, we see Amara's initial impulse for revenge and destruction transform into an admiration for creation.  She becomes an advocate for humanity and the world.  And yet she ends up being betrayed (by both the Winchesters and Chuck) and locked away again.  She's absorbed by Chuck in a way that doesn't fit within the logic of the show.  Chuck and Amara are equals - it doesn't make any sense that Chuck could overpower her.  Wouldn't they become a blend of the two of them?  And, since their separation caused the Big Bang, wouldn't their unity end the world?  Anyway, having the cosmic feminine be voiceless and invisible is the worst way for Amara's story to end.  Having Jack speak for her, saying that they are 'in harmony' tries to make this an acceptable fate for her, but only makes it worse.

Benny:  Another offscreen death, and this one feels particularly spiteful.  It really seems like he was killed just to be a conversation-starter for Cas and Dean.  However, if his fate can be sealed by a line of dialogue, then it only proves that confirmation of the fates of Eileen, AU Charlie and the other hunters could have been given in the same way.  Just one line could have done it - "I just spoke to Eileen, everyone's back."  Instead, at the end of 15.19 we're in the absurd position of having Sam and Dean toast the people they've lost without them even bothering to check who that may or not be.

Billie: The bizarre thing about Billie being revealed as a villain at the end of Season 15 was that she was supposed to be acting in self-interest - that she wanted to be the new God.  It made no sense.  What would make sense to me, though, would be if Chuck was controlling her (as Lucifer bound Death in Season 5).  Season 15 has strong echoes of Season 4 - and Billie took on both the role of Ruby (feeding Jack hearts rather than demon blood, but nevertheless making him into a weapon, with the price being the loss of his sense of self and ultimately his life) and Heaven (persuading Dean that it had to be this way, and telling him to go along with the plan).  We only have the Shadow's word for Billie's motivation, and we know she wasn't responsible for the deaths of the AU hunters, so in the end her status is ambiguous - she really seems to be a victim of Chuck's bad writing.  She's erased from the narrative along with Castiel, when really she should have been freed from Chuck's control and fighting on the side of nature and free will alongside the Winchesters.  Supernatural also concludes with nobody in the role of Death, which is a crazy loose thread left dangling.

Castiel: His confession was a thing of beauty, perfectly summing up the truth of both his and Dean's characters.  Both of them are made of and motivated by love.  And yet after speaking his truth, he is silenced.  He never gets to hear that he is loved in return (when the previous twelve seasons have made it abundantly clear to the audience that Dean loves Cas just as much as Cas loves Dean).  His capacity for love made him the only thing that Chuck could not control; as an agent of free will, he should have had a central role in Chuck's defeat.  

In 15x13, when Cas is in the Empty to see Ruby, the Shadow says: "funny thing about [Death's] plan, though... she didn't say anything about needing you. Baby, you can't just traipse in and out of here. It upsets the order of things."  To me, this sounded so much like 4x22's "you're not in this story" that I saw it as a pretty clear indication that Cas would play an important part in Chuck's defeat.  Because Team Free Will wouldn't follow the plan, would they?  They would find another way, wouldn't they?  Wouldn't they?

However, after the confession, he's never seen on screen again.  He's barely mentioned.  Eventually we're told he "helped" Jack, so he ends up where he started: as a servant of heaven.  He deserved to complete his fall, to become human, to live as well as speak his truth.  Making him a silent, unseen instrument of heaven undoes his entire arc.  Erasing him from the narrative requires the extraordinary warping of that narrative: nothing about his death suggests that it should be accepted as a permanent 'sacrifice', when we know that there is a spell that can return angels from the Empty (and, thanks to the handprint, we have his blood for it) and that Lucifer was brought back by Chuck in 15x19.  And the idea that Sam, Jack and Dean wouldn't try everything in their power to bring him back is utterly ludicrous.

Cas' confession scene to so closely mirrors 4x01's barn scene that the narrative is crying out for the parallel to be completed by Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty just as Cas rescued Dean from hell.  However, we're never given that narrative closure - just like we are never given the reunions demanded by the scenes of Sam losing Eileen and Charlie losing Stevie.

Chuck:  Okay, so he might not make your list of characters you could ever care about, but my point about his ending is that while it's fitting, for it to really work we also needed Cas to become human, too.  For Chuck, being human is a punishment, but for Cas it would be a reward.  We really needed this balance, otherwise all we have is humanity as the worst thing that could happen to you, which is not exactly a great parting message for the show.  (Also, how precisely is it possible to make him human?)  Not only is being human the worst fate possible, but, specifically, so is growing old and being forgotten.  Again, this is a punishment for Chuck, but it would have been a reward for Dean: growing old when the story (and his own self-loathing) constantly told him that he would die young; and being forgotten, not in a negative sense, but in terms of not being a character in a story any more: remembered fondly by his friends but no longer a legend, just a man living an insignificant little life exactly the way he chooses.  

Dean: Where do I even start.  Let's be clear: ending the story with his death (by any means and in any scenario) was always going to be the absolute worst possible ending for him and for the show.

In 15x19 we have the glorious moment when Chuck calls him the ultimate killer, and Dean (heeding Cas' words from 15x18) says "that's not who I am".  Now, I mean no disrespect to Dean here (because he is, canonically, a genius) but I don't think that he was in any way necessary to the Michael double-cross plot that eventually saw the defeat of Chuck.  Honestly, if he had died in 15x18, then 15x19 could still have played out in exactly the same way.  It's as if he wasn't saved so that he could save the world - he was saved so that he could have this moment of self-realisation.  He was saved so that he could stand up to Chuck (God, and the author, and parallelled with John) and tell him that he's not the person that he tried to force him to be.  

And yet by the next episode, this revelation is entirely forgotten.  He doesn't get to continue his self-actualisation by speaking his truth to Cas.  Instead, 15x20 presents Dean as almost a caricature of himself.  Dean loves pie.  Dean loves his brother.  Dean loves his car.  All of his complexity (present right from Season 1) is stripped away.

Finally free to write his own story, he ends up giving Chuck the ending he always wanted: one dead Winchester - killed, you could argue, by his brother (Sam fails to call for help and instead tells Dean to "go".)  Told by Cas that he's not "Daddy's blunt instrument" and accepting that he's not "the ultimate killer", Dean goes right back to killing (even threatening torture) and following his father's words (in the form of the journal).  

For Dean to die exactly as the story has always told him, and as he's always told himself in his worst moments of self loathing, is brutal and tragic.  What makes it truly appalling is the way in which both Dean and Sam accept his death and say it's "okay".  For Dean to say "always keep fighting" at the very moment when he gives up and when Sam gives up on him is bitterly ironic.  (Interestingly, when Cas said "you have to keep fighting" in his 12x12 death speech, exhorting Sam and Dean to save themselves and leave him behind, Sam replied with "we are fighting.  We're fighting for you, Cas" and Dean followed with "and like you said, you're family.  And we don't leave family behind".)   

Dean has always been the symbol of humanity in Supernatural: he stood for earth against the forces of heaven and hell.  He'd rather live with pain and guilt than exist as a "Stepford bitch in paradise", and yet that's exactly what he becomes, driving mindlessly through Jack's new heaven where everyone is "happy".  Dean previously dismissed heaven's happiness as "Memorex", and after Mary's death he was the only one not consoled by the confirmation that she was in heaven and happy.  Having Dean being content in heaven is utterly out of character.  He's always fought for free will, and in heaven - where there's no agency, where he's cut off from the world - this is the one thing that he does not have.

Eileen: An interesting, complex, kickass character, Eileen deserved so much better than being erased from the storyline.  A Men of Letters legacy, I imagine her working with Sam to share the knowledge contained within the bunker whilst also dismantling the patriarchy, elitism and colonialism of its past.  Her disappearance from the narrative makes absolutely no sense - 15x09, 15x17 and 15x18 confirm just how significant she is to Sam, and yet we never see them reunited or see Sam mourning her death.  The audience's love for Eileen is totally disregarded, too - she's ripped away from us with no further explanation.

Emma: Okay, so she wasn't actually in season 15, but that's sort of my point.  I have a lot to say about Emma, but here I'll just say that her significance has grown massively since Season 7.  The narrative has shifted from Team Free Will being sons to being fathers.  Even if she wasn't brought back, just a mention of her would have been significant.  (I can't stop thinking about the massive potential of a conversation about Emma between Dean and Jack.)  She didn't deserve to be forgotten.  

Season 15 was Supernatural's last opportunity to bring back characters from the past - such as Meg, original Charlie, Crowley, and Bela Talbot - and give them better endings.  Sadly this opportunity was wasted.

Garth: He actually seems to get his happy ending, on several levels.  He finds a family; he finds happiness; he's acknowledged as a hero by the Winchesters, who had previously mocked him.  Dean's words to him about embracing happiness are powerful.  Garth lives as his full, authentic self - monstrosity now included.  It's that monstrosity that's the issue here, though - as werewolves, Garth, Bess and little Sam and Castiel are doomed to go to purgatory when they die.  Mia Vallens said to Jack that "it doesn't matter what you are - it matters what you do", but in this case the opposite is true.  It's hideously unfair, but again the show never acknowledges this.  It would have been simple to change in a line or two - just a quick mention about how purgatory has been fixed, so that only truly monstrous beasts like the leviathan are kept trapped there - but the injustice remains.

Jack:  From his birth, his destiny was either to be the monstrous destroyer or the divine saviour of the world, which is precisely why he should have side-stepped it and found another way.  He deserved to live without the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Instead, he was forced to take on the power of God - and since when has someone suddenly taking on a huge amount of power ever ended well for Team Free Will?  Then, he repeats the exact same pattern set up by Chuck.  First, he abandons his creation by walking away and disappearing off to, in the words of Bobby, "wherever he went".  Like Chuck, he ignores earthly suffering: if he's now omniscient and omnipotent, is he in fact complicit in Dean's death?  Secondly, he's controlling: he remodels Heaven as he sees fit, making it a place where everyone's together and everyone's happy, with its inhabitants given absolutely no choice in the matter.  There's also no reason why Jack had to vanish from the story - Chuck was capable of spending time on Earth.

The mechanics of the bomb plot also irks me no end.  We're told by Death that the bomb will kill Jack.  However, their plan fails, and Jack survives the blast.  In 15x19, Dean tells Chuck that all the work done to turn Jack into a "cosmic bomb" has turned him instead into a "power vacuum."  It makes it seem like a side-effect, and also that "sucking up bits of power" has been charging him up to the point where he's "unstoppable".  He's able to both absorb and appropriate Chuck's power.  However, in 15x17 Adam and Serafina explain that the bomb will create a "metaphysical supernova" that will make Jack into "a living black hole for divine energy" - which suggests that, actually, the bomb worked as intended.  

But if the plan worked, why is Jack still alive?  Billie made it clear that Jack wouldn't survive.  And "nothing can escape" a black hole - so how is Jack able to use Chuck's powers to bring back Earth's population? Besides which, didn't 15x17 reveal that Chuck himself had "orchestrated" the entire thing?  Which makes the theory that Chuck possessed Jack really the only outcome that makes sense.  (Particularly as Serafina talks about Jack making his "vessel" strong.  Jack is a nephil, not an angel - he has a body, not a vessel.  Also, the bomb is made by fusing his soul with his grace - so, the two things that make up Jack, his humanity and his divinity, are annihilated.)  Deliberately making Chuck win, however (with no tease at the end that this might be the case), makes no sense either.  My head hurts.

Kevin: As if he hadn't been treated badly enough by the story already, we find that Kevin hasn't been in Heaven since we last saw him, but rather hell.  He ends up as an untethered ghost, presumably just wandering about for all eternity.  His fate comes courtesy of a bizarre new rule that souls from hell can't go to heaven - when previously both Bobby and John have done exactly that.  Again, just one line telling us that he's now in heaven could have changed his ending.

Michael: Bringing back Adam and Michael was a brilliant move, and this version of Michael was utterly compelling - struggling with his faith in his father after being abandoned, torn between his loyalty to Heaven and his relationship with Adam.  I thought that his handing over of the spell was very similar to Cas' "just so you understand … why I can't help" moment, and it seemed the precursor to Michael becoming an advocate for humanity, even a member of Team Free Will.  However, instead Michael was doomed to play out his father's narrative: killing his brother and repeating the cycle of sibling conflict and trauma that Chuck began when he betrayed Amara.  (And we'll credit Chuck's bad writing with the fact that the battle between Michael and Lucifer that was once predicted to wipe out millions and scorch the globe can now happen in the bunker without so much as a chair being knocked over - and without wires as well.)

Rowena: She seems to be relishing her reign as Queen of Hell, but the way she's so casually condemned is jarring.  Surely her previous good deeds and her final act of self sacrifice would be enough to tip the scales in a heavenly direction?  (It worked for Lily Sunder - another woman who vowed never to be powerless again.)  They could easily have said it was Chuck's fault that she had to remain in hell - but instead it just seems like a foregone conclusion.  She deserved better.

Sam: If we're supposed to believe that having a "normal" life is Sam's idea of writing his own story, why doesn't he do it as soon as Chuck is defeated?   Instead, his suburban "apple pie" life only happens after Dean dies, which makes it seem more of a grief arc than a happy ending.  (Just as he escaped into a self-professed "fantasy" life with Amelia after Dean's death, or when he succumbed to the comfort of a fake married life in Charming Acres after the trauma of losing all the AU hunters).  

The idea that he'd keep hunting for Dean doesn't ring true - Dean had been the one openly craving retirement and domesticity for several seasons.  After all, the idea of Dean as a hunter and Sam as the brother who wants to be normal is Chuck's story.  Dean wasn't the "ultimate killer" that Chuck wanted him to be, and Sam too had been forging his own identity as a leader, a Man of Letters, and a powerful witch.  He'd also found love - and with Eileen, he could be his full, authentic self.  The idea that he would leave her is absurd, as is the idea that he would abandon his entire extended found family, who seem to have no part in his new life.  When Dean returned from purgatory, he was furious that Sam had failed to help Kevin.  Would Sam really do the exact same thing again - walk away from Jody and the girls when they are mourning both Cas and Dean and need his support?  Would he just abandon Rowena's entire witchy collection and leave the huge store of knowledge in the Bunker locked up in the dark?

The Shadow: again, dubious on a list of characters you care about, but hey - all they ever really wanted was to go back to sleep, and can't we all relate to that?  Anyway, they made the list for being one of the most frustrating open endings of the show.  What did it mean for the Empty to be "loud"?  Who is the Shadow, anyway?  Just how did this cosmic entity fit in with the mythology of Chuck and Amara?  It's maddening that the Shadow and the Empty were made central to several seasons only to be suddenly dropped.

The Wayward Sisters: my beloveds. Such a brilliant cast of characters and such wasted potential.  They're an important part of the Winchesters' family and Team Free Will, but, in the end, they're forgotten.  Claire may have gotten her happy ending with the return of Kaia, but this happens off screen.  We never see her reaction to the deaths of Castiel or Dean.

The final few episodes seem to be about stripping away all of the characters except Sam and Dean, so they are completely alone by 15x20. Phrases such as "just us" and "just you and me" and "it's always been you and me" seem to suggest that this is a good thing, but previously the idea of them being isolated and alone has seemed like the worst case scenario (for example in Season 8, when Sam and Dean are forced to give up Amelia and Benny, respectively, or in Chuck's vision of a future in which the brothers lose Eileen and Cas along with Jody and the girls, give up hope, and end up as vampires, killed by their remaining friends). 

Anyway, the whole idea of just Sam and Dean going wherever the road takes them is Chuck's story.  It's on the cover of his books.  By making Chuck the villain, Season 15 itself makes it impossible for a return to this idea to be a satisfying conclusion to the story.

In fact, Supernatural was never about just Sam and Dean.  It was always about family.  Season 1 was about Sam, Dean and John.  Bobby introduced the phrase "family don't end with blood" in Season 3 and Dean coined the phrase "Team Free Will" in Season 4.  It's an ethos that has spread into the fandom, too.  Didn't the SPN Family deserve a finale that celebrated that idea, of banding together, of caring about the whole world, of love being the ultimate expression of free will?

You can't help but pick up on a theme: characters that were forgotten are forgotten again.  Characters who were locked away are locked away again.  The same narratives and the same traumas play out again and again.  No-one escapes their miserable, predestined fate.  It's Chuck's ending.  And it's Chuck's spiteful ending.

It's the ending that kills off its beloved characters, and also destroys their whole world.  The bunker is left in darkness.  Time has moved forward by so much in order to accommodate Sam's natural death that we can't even imagine the ongoing stories of other characters like Garth or the Sioux Falls family (ironic, given the episode's title).

It's the kind of ending you get when a show is cancelled and the writer decides to kill off their characters and wreck their world so that there's no possibility of another network or another writer taking over their story.  (And yet outside of the show, there's no evidence to suggest this - you would think that the ending had been designed to make a reboot impossible, but it has already been talked about.)

If we were not going to get a sense of the world continuing, then we could have been given a more radical and satisfying ending.  We could have had Death collect on their promise to one day reap God.  We could have had a world freed from the supernatural entirely: heaven, hell and purgatory obliterated, and Team Free Will finding peace in life on earth.

Because Chuck has been the author and the narrator the entire time, it makes no sense for the story to continue past the point of his defeat.  (It makes even less sense for that story to revert back to Chuck's ideal narrative.)  So, really we should have been given a more open ending: Team Free Will triumphant over Chuck and their future left open, the author dead and the characters' stories entrusted to the audience.

Instead, in the end, it's a bizarre mix of needlessly closed-down endings (killing off Cas, Sam and Dean, and vanishing Jack) and frustrating open ones (the loud Empty, there being no Death, Kevin wandering, the ambiguous fate of Eileen, Adam, Donna and the AU hunters).  

And the final two episodes are also objectively bad.  The double-cross plot in 15x19 is lame when the resolution of the Chuck storyline should have been profound. (It invites comparisons with the Season 11 finale, which was excellent.) 15x20 feels weirdly empty and flat.  Dean's death is unrealistic; it echoes Sam's death in Season 2 and Dean's in Season 9 (which, if you think about it, would only be possible if Chuck was still writing it), but lacks the emotional punch of either.  Dean's "I'm proud of us," in his Season 9 death scene is so much more powerful than his "I'm proud of you" in the finale.  And let's not even mention that wig.

In conclusion: every single character deserved better.  The actors deserved better.  The audience deserved better.  Because the ending we were given was not the ending that the season, or the entire series, had been building towards.

The ending tries to destroy every good thing that Supernatural has ever given us - vibrant characters, the fight for free will, the value of found family, the power of love - but it fails. Ultimately the characters and themes are too powerful to be contained by that terrible, flimsy ending. So now I've gotten all of that off my chest, I'm going right back to finale denialism.

[wayward-angels-club]

This ficlet is written for and inspired by @valleydeans A Ghost Story. It contains spoilers to the entire story, so please don’t read this if you haven’t finished reading it yet. Wc:1400, no extra warnings (warnings for original fic stand) Italicizes mark establishing narrative the rest is in Cas’ POV.

It first plays on the old radio that sits attached to the bottom of one of the kitchen cupboards in the townhouse. Both Sam and Dean forgot it existed, left behind by the previous tenants, since they never had cause to use it but it was simple enough that Cas managed to get it turned on.

Granted it was only because the button was labeled Power; Cas knows even a moron could have figured that one out.

Cas didn't know how to change what music played at first, so he pressed buttons until something happened and took note of the outcomes. Seek seemed to be his friend, AM did not, and one afternoon while Dean and Sam were out at class or work or the library - there were so many places for Dean to be now, back before his resurrection Cas could have just walked around the grounds of the manor until he came upon him but now Dean is as hard for Cas to find as his place in this new time is - he finds a station that played a lovely song with a piano (Sam later told him it was an ‘indie station’, he doesn’t know how to tell him that he has no idea what that means) soft lyrics fell upon his ears and he lost his afternoon to meaneal tasks while the music floated from the small machine.

He takes notice of a song that starts to play only because it is in such contrast to the music the machine has been playing for the better part of the afternoon. There's a heaviness to the melody, an intensity that the other songs lacked, he spends much of the song listening only to the instruments.

The only line that actually sinks in after that first listen is “there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin” and he can’t understand why his chest seems to expand against his ribs while his lungs squeeze themselves together because he’s never heard the type of lyric that was made to hit you square in the chest because, well, there’s not been a lot of music listening aside from piano and string quartets in his life.

He asks Sam how to learn the words in a song and Sam shows him how to get to a ‘Google tab’ so he can look up the song (Sam reckons a genius lyrics page might be a little too much for Cas). He types the words he remembers into the ‘Google’, and is decidedly confused by what can only be the name of the song. Take Me to Church, while a lovely name, stands out like a sore thumb in his head alongside the titles of the pieces he aimed to perfect in his old life.

He spends as much time as possible over the next three days listening to the song on ‘Youtube’ while he reads the lyrics, he just barely manages to stop himself from writing the lyrics out on paper so he can look at them when he’s away from a computer (like when Dean heads to school with his laptop and he can’t listen unless the machine - a ‘radio’ apparently - decides to play it)

Each line draws him in and pushes him away in equal measure, humor for Cas doesn’t mean laughing at a funeral it means Dean teasing him, tickling him, smiling as he waits for the joke to land on Cas’ ears. But still they all seem to resonate beyond what he thought was possible, Dean was always met with disapproval, he always wanted to worship him in any way he could, even now he curses the moments they could have had together if only one of them had been braver before the night spent in their clearing.

“We were born sick / you heard them say it” and “I was born sick, but I love it” stop his breath cold on every listen. He doesn’t allow himself to look too deeply into that, he’s long since accepted himself and delving into beliefs of a time long since past does no one any good.

What strikes him as odd is that there's a violence to the love and devotion that he can’t really understand, worshipping like a dog and revealing your sins to the sound of steel being honed isn't how he loves Dean, isn't how he sees Dean as his salvation, he writes hymns inspired by Dean. He doesn’t, could never, equate his devotion to something so lacking in softness, not when he can still feel the tufts of Dean’s hair under his nose or the petals of the roses Dean winded up the trellis on the side of his balcony.

The focus on a violent love turns him off from the song but there’s a pull in his mind with each iteration of “offer me my deathless death” he knows enough to know it might be a reference to sexual pleasure but he can't shake that something about the line draws him in, what with his death being undone when Dean brought him back.

The bridge, as the website calls it (Sam does eventually end up showing Cas the genius page), he reads the most, over and over and over and he thinks how it was just him and Dean in those stolen moments, how the doctrine he was told to follow labelled him a sinner but with Dean that didn't matter, it didn't even filter into the moment. The ritual the man sings of, the scene that plays out with it, becoming clean, human, he can’t even put words to why that settles so deeply into his chest, why it makes sense to him even though he never truly felt dirty about the things he and Dean did, the love they shared. But the truth of the matter is that Dean made him human again that night in the manor, and in doing so made him clean, clean of the never ending hell of the manor, just like he had promised to do all that time ago.

“Let me give you my life” sits heavy in his skull, it scratches at something deep within his brain for weeks. Ever since he first took the words into his head something about them made him think of them. It didn’t make sense though, Cas’ death hadn’t given Dean his life. Hell Cas’ death almost surely led to Dean’s own. So why would this lyric stick with him?

It's about a month after the successful ritual that he hears the song again, a fluke video on ‘autoplay’ on the youtube tab Dean keeps open for him. Let me give you my life. Let me give you my life. Cold fingers dance along the hairs at the nape of his neck, blood covers his hands, a redo, a trade off. Let me give you my life. And then a trade again, Dean to him this time. Let me give you my life. Good god, let me give you my life. The weeks spent ruminating over the line make sense now, as though some deep part of him always knew of the choice he made that night, the choice to save his love, the choice to give his life for the only thing that ever made him feel alive.

In the wake of his completed reincarnation, the sloughing off of death’s hold on him, the song takes on intense new meaning, which is no surprise really. His heaven is and has always been the moments he and Dean spend alone together, afternoons in the music room or midnights spent wrapped around each other. His lover is the sunlight, to keep the goddess on their side Cas and then Dean offered their sacrifices. Deathless deaths in multiples, love is worth more than what Sunday’s used to hold.

One night he plays the song for Dean, when the spring shoots are digging their way to the surface and the snowdrops are withering. He says nothing when Dean’s hold on him tightens as the song plays, he doesn't mention the hitches in his husband’s breath or the redness in his eyes when Dean hits replay on the song. He doesn’t bring up the way this song seems to recount their story with startling accuracy, he knows Dean understands. Take Me to Church... they needn’t worry, they’ve already reached salvation.

Sam sneaks the song into the playlist for the reception, their guests assume it’s just another popular song with a decent beat but for them it’s undoubtedly more.

[mattzerella-sticks]

Thoughts on "Carry On" after I've mulled it over:

Now that I've had time to sit on it, I can be a little more precise on my thoughts of this finale:

- Dean's 'ending': Taken out by a rusty nail... I hate it. Then I heard some opinions - without Chuck there were no magic fixes, and this was bound to happen if they continued hunting because of that. It was a human, ordinary, accidental death meaning the Winchesters are just ordinary. Still, being taken out by a nail or rebarb or whatever wasn't a satisfying death for Dean Winchester. Added to the fact he most certainly wanted to live (Miracle, job application, etc.) And he didn't want to hunt anymore either! He wasn't looking for hunts (like Sam was). They stumbled onto that hunt by accident.

From a writer's point of view, I can say now it makes sense with the plot of the episode (only). Dean's death was a catalyst - to give Sam 'freedom' and to show us, the audience, what Heaven was like now that Jack is God. His own sort of 'freedom', I guess.

Unfortunately the plot of the episode still sucked. Just because it makes sense 'story wise' (and I say that very loosely because Dean didn't even get his loose ends tied up nicely). A death during a hunt was something Dean figured would happen in his youth, and he didn't care because he practically was a ghost without many physical attachments. Now he has so many they decide to take him away and for what purpose? It is the last episode. A series finale should only hurt in saying goodbye to the characters, but not like this.

And a goodbye like this, for a character who has had suicidal tendencies and from the looks of it was moving past that, who never really thought about his wants until this moment, and who was on the cusp of being textually confirmed queer (which would have been monumental just saying), it felt like we as fans were stabbed by the rebarb. Which goes to show how much we love the character, one thing. And I think that's why they knew it would hurt. However, they were so wrapped up in this 'shock' they didn't think about any of the consequences listed above as to why this would hurt not only us but their legacy. They figured it'd be a bookend, only for a book whose story ended a decade ago.

- Cas: A one-sentence reference sucks. That's just it.

Fanfiction was mostly built around Cas, too, and I had a feeling they wouldn't show his rescue because leaving that to us would be a good gift. "Here, Cas is alive and human but we won't tell you how - our last fanfiction gap". But Cas's absence wasn't a fanfiction gap, it's a canyon. So much of this episode doesn't make sense without Cas. And, honestly, a good chunk of outrage could have been avoided if Misha was allowed to film (or, if rumors were true, if they left his scenes in). Like it's been proven the majority of fans love Cas, and Jensen and Jared love Misha, so not having him in the finale gives credence to, that the cast and crew might love Misha, TPTB certainly didn't. And doesn't that tarnish your legacy, that you have a man dedicate 12 years of his life to your show and this is how you repaid him? Even if they decided to 'no homo' Cas's declaration (which i doubt they would have because those optics are much worse) at least show it.

Which leads to why he wasn't included in the finale. If he was there, they'd have to have him and Dean talk. About that night, when Cas told Dean he loves him. And if they did, and had there be a reciprocal confession, I bet things on Tumblr would have felt a little different. An equal exchange instead of plain highway robbery.. Yes we would all still want Dean and Cas to live long, human lives, but at least Dean and Cas's emotional arcs were resolved by the SHOW WRITERS, whose job it is to do so. Not ours! But they never understood how to give Castiel good things. Clearly, they know how to make Castiel give good things (like creating Dean's perfect Heaven for him) but not receive them in kind (reciprocated love from Dean). By not having this, it plays exactly into the bury your gays trope we were all afraid of, even if Cas is back. Because he, a queer character, is still living his life for a character he believes doesn't love him back - even if Cas 'doesn't need to know if that's true'. The audience does, and I'm sure Misha did as well.

The writers set up such an easy win but what this finale did was put every character back to season one, and given Misha didn't show up until season 4, makes sense why he wasn't in this episode.

- Sam's life after Dean: Sam liked being a hunter. We had how many countless episodes show that? He enjoyed saving people, research, being a leader - he was good at it. Hell, they even made it a point to have him find someone in the life who understood what it was like to hunt and wrote a beautiful relationship that also gave disability rep.

Only they never followed through.

Like, with Dean, so much of this lead up was then tossed out the window by Sam starting a family, which he never had any indication he wanted to do in these later seasons. Since season 8, really. What we got was that he liked to hunt, he was good at it. He could have restarted the Men of Letters, America chapter, and made the hunters even more connected than before!

Not saying he didn't do that, but knowing how Sam was raised I doubt he would let himself hunt with a kid. So, by showing him marry and have Dean Jr., it's a non-textual confirmation he retired. Which, like with Dean's ending, didn't make sense with what he wanted. It felt like a "might as well" since Dean wasn't there any longer. Like, whats the point of doing something I love now that I don't have my brother with me?

Instead of leaving the Bunker he should have transformed it into a bustling center of activity so he wasn't alone. Extend the Winchester family further and become the hunters' patriarch. Eileen being the matriarch.

Which, circling back, Eileen should have had textual confirmation, too. They showed a brunette woman standing far back, and I get if the actress couldn't be there to film why they would do that. But why not show pictures of him and Eileen if they did marry? I mean, there's a giant picture of Sam with Dean, Mary, and John I DON'T remember them ever having. Why he would blow that up after having two previous episodes talk about how much of a bad father he is...

Sam's ending falls in the same vein as Dean's in that it's unsatisfactory and doesn't fit the character anymore. Not saying Sam didn't want this in the past, but we all saw him change. Hunting was in his blood, and he was fantastic at it. It used to be a way for him to hang with Dean but it would have also been good to see him carry on the legacy in Dean's honor. A better way then by naming his son Dean.

Which strikes another nail on the head. We have Dean, a subtextually queer/textually ambiguous sexuality character, die, and because of this Sam can go on and live the 'apple pie life'? Cas's confession scene wasn't homophobic, but damned if Sam didn't spend the thirty years after Dean's death yelling 'Straight Pride'.

Textually, giving characters a family is a common trope in these sort of epilogues. Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. A way to show they've moved on from trauma and are trying to be happy (albeit in a very antiquated way). But at least it fit with those characters and stories. This was Sam trying to be a person who he wasn't anymore, who clearly would rather be on the road hunting (given that ugly wig scene in the garage with Dean's Impala). Actually, worse, it felt like Sam was trying to live a life Dean always wanted. Which shows that even if he's alive Sam isn't happy with what his life was, he was content. He was waiting for death.

- Dean's time in Heaven: Like I said previously about Dean and his 'death', it makes sense to have Dean die early if the goal was to show how Heaven had been changed. Which hurts worse because that again reinforces how Dean's storyline truly is left unresolved for plot development.

And, honestly, they should have cut this entire sequence if they weren't gonna have the cameos. They should have changed the script so that Dean didn't die, because there was no emotional pay-off of Dean going to heaven. We're told it's freedom, however it's more like a waiting room. For Dean, driving endlessly until Sam dies. And for us, being told we can't start writing until Sam gets there and we finish his montage.

Like, is it beautiful that Jack and Cas remade heaven so Dean would be happy? Yes. Did I need to know this until like maybe the last few minutes? No. Dean could have lived a long life, with Cas/without Cas, and then die first and be taken to Heaven. And then after Bobby gives him the rundown, about how time works differently here, we get the Sam end of life and see him pop up too. And when Sam asks what happened to Heaven, Dean could have clapped him on the back and told him he'd explain in the car and they drive away knowing they lived a good life, and have eternity of peace.

Because having Heaven be an open sandbox, for us, to let characters roam free and see those they love without them being memories - beautiful and exactly how Heaven should be. It definitely is something we as writers would have enjoyed if we didn't get it how we did.

Because it hadn't felt like Dean nor Sam deserved the deaths they got. Making Heaven, ultimate freedom, seem such a dangerous idea. That the only true peace is in death (Dean) and life is spent waiting for death so you can be reunited (Sam). What about any of that makes it seem like any of what Sam and Dean did was worth it? Was good? At least on Earth. Sure, without them (and Cas and Jack) Heaven wouldn't be the way it was. But that doesn't seem like a good reward for them. Their reward should have been living long lives (both of them) and them buttoning it with those five to seven minutes of how Heaven changed (more if they decided to leave Cas as an angel despite that being, again, zero character growth and not aligning with how the story was unfolding)

And after a painful, undeserved death, we get Dean in Heaven but still not happy? It was clear Dean was still waiting to let himself enjoy seeing all his family, his friends, Cas, because Sam wasn't there. Which shows he hadn't broken the sacrificial cycle because he's not putting himself first! "Oh but he has eternity to do it!" Yes, but he shouldn't have had to wait still. His whole life has been spent waiting and he gets killed just before he gets his due, and we never see him particularly 'enjoy' his reward, which is too tragic for a series finale. "He could have done more than drive, we don't know!" Yes, but if they're not showing it then why should I read into it? This finale isn't deep. "But covid-" Yeah, I get that. They should have changed the script because without those cameos Dean's time in Heaven was more than pointless and this whole finale was just an exercise in how to hate your main characters.

What this boils down to is that we, as fans, were told that this was for us, except we already knew Heaven was ours because Heaven was supposed to be the implied. Heaven is whatever we make of it. We didn't need to be told this through the show. Having this be the goal of this episode, of the finale - which sums up the goal of the entire series, really - be totally focused on the life we get after death instead of doing the most to make life on Earth paradise for you, was rotten. And Sam's 'happily ever after' was cheapened because of Dean's death.

- Family Don't End in Blood?: Taking into account all of the above, the show has failed the core message of what we as a fandom loved. Family don't end in blood.

Again, I get that covid stole any chance of reunions in Heaven, but it also stole so many others. Like Sam wouldn't have called Garth, Jody, Donna, the girls and Eileen, to have them here for Dean's funeral? Sam wouldn't have burned Dean alone! We know there was some time that passed since the hunt and Dean's funeral by the dog being there, but it should have been more people. Which, again, they should have axed it from the story if they couldn't get them because, like these side characters have done from the beginning, they change the context of the show! Sam's loneliness would have hit harder if it was a room full of people all telling stories about Dean to then just him, alone, in the Bunker trying to move on.

The writers thought we didn't need all these cameos, but we did because - as we keep repeating - while the show, at its heart, is Sam and Dean, there were so many more people who gave their characters depth and allowed for this show to continue. It should have been a celebration of who the boys became and how it was through these bonds they were able to overcome so much.

Which, if redone in that context, Dean's speech to Sam could have been so much better. More poignant and hopeful instead of sad. I mean, I could barely focus on what was being said because I was in too much shock of what was being done to Dean. If they had a similar speech, given with Dean and Sam parting ways to start new lives. Dean reminding Sam he's done so much good, that he's proud of his brother and knows he can do so much even without him, the emotional beat would have still hit! Probably even better than with his death. Because my takeaway from Dean's death isn't "Dean is proud of Sam" it's "Dean died stupidly".

Going to show that this entire script was a series of choices that were all the worst possible outcome, stitched together and handed in. It didn't feel congruent to the story and, instead, a bunch of items checked off of a list the writers were given. It didn't feel like the culmination of the series like we were promised, instead a 'what if the show skipped fourteen years after season 2, John's dead, Mom's killer dead, and no demon deal'. It felt like (even if it wasn't intended) the writers telling us "don't expect people to change or that happy ending exist in life" which, given current climates and attitudes, is dangerous.

Overall:

They were trying to satisfy an audience built around fandom and fanworks, they wanted to leave so much "up to interpretation" so we can continue crafting our narratives through this open sandbox. What they failed to consider is that we don't care where the brothers, or any of the characters, physically are in this show, we care more about the characters themselves and their emotional goals. That's why we write fanfiction. That's why there's a lot of canon divergence. We thank them for the world and play around in it. So, by giving Sam and Dean these 'half-lives' on screen, letting loose threads hang so we, as an audience, can fill in the blanks (Dean and Cas's heaven reunion, who Sam married, what Dean did while driving for fifty years, etc.) was a poor and lazy decision because we are tired of having to do your job! Supernatural is a collaborative effort yes, but they misunderstood the assignment. We still need textual goalposts, like seeing Cas or Eileen. We needed them to finish what they were saying, so we could then take over and continue the story.

A series finale should feel poignant but the only really emotional moment was Dean's death (not for good reasons), and the rest was filler. Your series finale should not feel like filler. It felt rushed. It felt sloppy and - because of not including a certain character - plain rude. Just... it didn't work. The short of it is that the finale, as a whole, didn't work. It didn't wrap the show up in its entirety like we were promised it would. And if they do revive this show for a mini-series or movie, they best forget what happened in episode 20.

[demonologist-in-denim]

Review of Falling Skies by VivatRex

The first Crowley redemption fanfic I ever came across was Falling Skies by VivatRex. This was shortly after 8x23 aired, and at the time, there wasn’t much fic out there involving Crowley that portrayed him as anything other than a villain. (There still isn’t, to be fair.) And there definitely wasn’t much out there in which Crowley actively sought redemption, much less worked alongside and eventually earned himself a place among the Winchester extended family. So the fact that Falling Skies was a slow burn Mooseley fic was just something I was willing to accept in order to read what I was desperately looking for in a Crowley fic.

I was inspired by this post to go back and reread Falling Skies for the first time since it was completed in 2015. All 328,000+ words of it. It’s certainly the longest fanfic I’ve ever read. And I’ve read fanfics that more closely align to what I’m looking for – but because this was my first Crowley redemption fanfic, I’ve never forgotten it. There are parts of it - scenes, even single lines - that I vividly recall. There are scenes and dynamics and plot points in this fic that were significant influences on my own writing, and are so deeply entrenched in my understanding of post-cure Crowley that rereading this fic felt like some tantalizingly familiar part of myself echoing back to me after a long absence. This is the longest review I have ever written, but then, it is a very long fic.

To quickly summarize the fic, Falling Skies begins after 8x23, with the angels falling to earth and Sam having collapsed from attempting to abort the demon trials. The overarching plot follows Dean, Sam, humanized Cas and resentfully cured Crowley as they attempt to deal with the fallout of Abaddon’s return and the shuttering of the Gates of Heaven. Along the way, a new villainous angel makes a play to rule both Heaven and Hell, angels and demons battle out their differences on Earth in a massive slaughter, and the Man Tablet is discovered, which reveals that the ultimate apocalypse involves merging all the known planes of existence into a hellish nightmare. Throughout all of this, Crowley struggles with a blood-born conscience that begins to form itself into a soul, a mental and emotional link that now connects him and Sam due to the incomplete cure, and rival selves: the cunning, successful King of Hell and a man haunted by his past, longing to make amends. It’s equal parts Mooseley, Destiel, and a season’s worth of near-world ending scenario.

Scenes from this fic that I’ll never forget:

The opening scene is Crowley in the church at the end of 8x23, beset by guilt and shame as he can feel for the first time in hundreds of years the depth of pain and suffering he’s caused.

His reaction shortly after the aborted cure to remembering he killed Meg. “Crowley’s stomach twisted in a painful knot at the thought of Meg…The unspeakable acts that hadn’t seemed unspeakable at all at the time…He promptly rolled down the Impala’s window. He leaned out, vomiting onto the road.”

The scene in which Crowley admits to Sam that he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself after the cure, “if you’d cured me, I would’ve hung myself the minute I found a long enough rope.”

The scene in which Crowley faces the demon who tortured him on the rack, and sees himself in comparison to that demon, hears his own awful words to Kevin, “What you people fail to under is that you are nothing” and “it makes him sick to what little remained of his soul to think that his mindset had been similar to this…only a few months prior. That he hadn’t been much better than this, once.”

Fergus’ death scene was particularly memorable. Driven by fear of his own impending death and going to Hell, he accidently kills someone he loves, and takes his own life by hanging. It’s not ever the backstory I would have imagined for him, but it was written with real heart behind it.

Having chosen to complete the cure, that Crowley receives complete forgiveness. Whatever substitutes for divine authority in this fic restores his soul fully, forgives him for all his past sins, and frees Crowley from the ruinous effects of damnation. “He’d been forgiven. Crowley sobbed into his hands.” It’s not the story I would have written for Crowley, but at a time when Crowley redemption fic was almost nonexistent, this was powerful.

In a rare moment in which Cas is being a self-righteous asshole, Dean remarks that “you’re really reminding me of someone…a douche bag I met back in ’08 who threatened to throw me back into Hell if I didn’t show him the respect he deserved.” Later, after he’s had time to calm down and begins to feel guilt, Cas asks “The ‘douche bag’ who raised you from Hell. Did you hate him?”

This fic offered a lot of the emotional struggles and scenes, the waypoints, I wanted to see along Crowley’s road of redemption.

His struggle with embracing more human emotions and perspective. His subconscious and then intentional rejection of the monster he used to be.

Being offered a choice between more power and more humanity, and after a long internal struggle, choosing humanity.

Ultimately choosing the Winchesters and (Crowley’s own conception of) the greater good over demonic self-interests. Choosing “one tiny forever [with people he cared about over] a never-ending existence” without them.

Crowley grasping – and openly admitting to valuing – humanity for its own sake. And that while in becoming less demon and more human, in becoming family with the Winchesters, he may lose his powers and influence, his immortality and near-invincibility, that he gained everything else. “Love, friendship, family, redemption…It’s all worth it!”

Crowley in this fic is written as having that change of heart and perspective because of and for Sam’s sake, and I very much write all of that happening for Crowley’s own sake and born of something innate to him, but seeing all of this in a fic assured me that I wasn’t the only one who thought that redemption was possible for Crowley. It meant a lot to me at the time. I guess, considering I was willing to reread this whole fic again all these year later, it still does.

Crowley admitting – to himself and to others – or directly referencing feelings of guilt, remorse and shame for his actions. It wasn’t explained away as just the effects of the cure. Something deep inside him had been changed, restored.

The very first scene resoundingly validated my own understanding of 8x23 – Crowley caught up in the flood of emotions brought on by the cure, seeing his actions for the first time as truly monstrous, hearing the cries of his victims. Holy mother of sin, the things I’ve done.

The admittance to himself that time alone in the bunker’s dungeon, in the dark, was too much time left to self-reflection and memories – the nagging of his conscience when he’d rather suppress it entirely.

The rawness of his emotions, his unfamiliarity with how to process them, “it had been a constant struggle not to start sobbing like a bloody child since Sam had almost cured him.”

His increasing hatred of other demons, not because of their disloyalty or incompetence, but because of what they symbolize: their delight in suffering, the misery they cause, that he was anything like them and might still be – or worse, might regress and become again.

In canon, Crowley asks Sam where to begin looking for forgiveness. He references wanting to make amends again in 10x17 when he tells Sam he thought making changes to Hell “might matter.” But after the cure, Crowley in canon never really expresses one way or another whether he thinks he’s capable of or can earn redemption. We’re left with subtext that suggests Crowley thinks he’s too far gone for that – or has been convinced that that’s the case by the attitude of the Winchesters and Cas. Fanfiction, this fic, offered up what canon couldn’t:

Crowley admitting to hating what he was and wanting to be better. Saying things like “I’ve been past the point of forgiveness for a very long time” and “There’s no forgiveness, not for a thing like me” and hating that.

Feeling beyond ashamed to have so thoroughly damned himself beyond any hope of redemption. “Even now, he would never forgive himself for all he’d done – and truthfully, he didn’t believe he deserved forgiveness.” Crowley feeling that way both kills me – because it’s not true, dammit – and fulfills a perverse need to see the character suffer through all the necessary growth to actually become that better self that is worthy of that redemption.

Crowley admits his own efforts are “not enough!...It’ll never be enough” compared with his sins. In canon, Crowley never says as much, but plenty of other characters, particularly the Winchesters, are more than happy to come to that conclusion for him.

Again, I am amazed – looking back at this fic – of how much of Crowley’s road to redemption that this fic established for me. One of the waypoints was Crowley coming to a point where he recognizes and then internalizes that being a demon is bad. That seems obvious, but Crowley had so much to gain from being a demon. Did gain so much, compared to his human life. But in becoming a demon, souls lose something, something of immense and irreplaceable value.

After the aborted cure, Crowley “had all the souls of the damned behind him, and he’d never felt weaker.”

And then there was the matter of watching what other demons did, the harm they caused – seeing the consequences and aftermath of the pain and suffer he had caused, how that effected the people around him, the people Crowley now cared about.

There’s coming to grips with the understanding that possessing a meatsuit is a horrible, violating experience for that person.

And that being this broken, corrupted thing is something Crowley wants to get away from, forget about, suppress. And as he increasingly becomes one of the boys, it’s something he tries – without success – to put behind him. “Would you believe that I’d almost forgotten?...Forgot what I was.”

Crowley’s road to redemption, his “transformation” in this fic, is slow. As appealing as the plot point of the demon cure was in canon, I couldn’t imagine the reforming of a soul of the demonic smoke to be anything other than slow, painful, and complicated. It had to be that way, it had to be something of value, to be a redemption that was actually earned.

Crowley’s humanity shines through a little at a time. In most of fanfiction, we go straight to the heart of the matter. That’s what we’re here for. But it’s so much more impactful when the glimpses of Crowley’s feelings and humanity are rare, and veiled behind snark, dismissal, and misdirection.

Crowley has moments of both begrudged self-reflection and open admission. He surprises himself in moments with the sincerity of his own remarks.

Grapples with longing for humanity and the good aspects that come with that, as much as he hates human weakness.

He often considers himself not human enough, and is hard on himself for that.

He learns to ask for help, and the scene in which he asks for help in completing the cure is something I longed to see play out in canon.

There is a scene where a character can see Crowley’s true form – what an angel sees when looking at humans, demons and other beings – and can see that it’s healing from the corrosive effects of damnation and being on Hell’s rack. This is something that I’ve never explored in my own work, but have often thought about and wondered how to visualize for the reader. Visualize Crowley “regaining pieces of his soul,” as Eliot in Leverage recently put it.

There are moments in the fic in which Crowley’s demonic instincts and humanity align, have the same goal, which is something I love and would have wanted to see explored in canon.

At one particular vulnerable moment, Crowley admits to the cure having saved him – “You saved me” – from the damage done to a soul corrupted into a demon. Saved him from himself, stopping him from doing more evil in the future.

The tragedy of that, of course, is that the Winchesters didn’t save Crowley intentionally, didn’t do it for Crowley’s sake, and because of that, Crowley in canon could only begrudge having been transformed from an “icy, unfeeling, ruthless, perfect” demon into a “messy, emotional” shadow of himself.

Even as Crowley laments “not being human enough” in this fic, he is also conflicted about not being demon enough.

The part of Crowley that still revels in depravity and violent strength, in ultimate power, can’t stand the idea of being weakened by human nature. He can’t believe he’s starting to feel all those rainbow, feel-good emotions that make such fools of the Winchesters and their kind.

Equally, not being demon enough undermines Crowley’s legitimacy as King of Hell. If he isn’t the most ruthless, sadistic, uncaring monster out there, he isn’t fit to rule Hell. And not being the king, who is he? And from where does he obtain his power, his means of security and self-preservation? It is as much an existential crisis as it is a matter of wanting to hold onto ill-gotten power and authority.

Giving into his more human side, “would he even be able to rule Hell,” or would he be reduced back to the nothing that he was before bashing his way through the ranks?

And if he gives up humanity for being King? For power? At least then “I’ll have power. I’ll have respect. I’ll have the best a demon can have. The best I can have…It’s all I can do.”

Even in admitting letting go of humanity secures him power, Crowley admits that he chooses that because it’s all he thinks he’s worthy of, a sad consolation prize. Crowley never admits as much in canon, but I absolutely read all this as the reason for his inability to let go of Hell and move to join the Winchesters sooner.

Crowley’s perspective on being king in this fic and how that perspective changes over the course of the slow burn is perhaps the greatest strength of the fic.

Throughout much of the fic, Crowley legitimately loves being king. He loves the authority, he loves the power. The fic leans heavily on his cunning and strategic mind, something that canon failed to capitalize on after Crowley became a second-tier member of Team Free Will. While reading, I honestly believed that the author was writing a Crowley that loved the crown and would begrudge giving it up.

But slowly, what he loves about being a king cannot outweigh everything he hates about Hell, demonkind, and what being king costs him.

Very much in line with canon, Crowley gets to a point where he is forced to admit to himself that despite all the perks and benefits, he actually hates being the King of Hell.

He believes he has to keep being king to keep Hell in line and less of a threat – just like in canon. And uses that as a justification, along with love of power, to remain trapped in his own personal hell.

A few aspects of being King of Hell that the fic explores that canon doesn’t include:

The brilliant idea that “Hell chooses who leads it.” Demonic loyalty shifts from an unsuitable leader to a powerful alternative, and when that loyalty shifts, the power of Hell shifts from to that particular demon or Knight of Hell. That’s what gives the king (or queen) of Hell their immense power and legitimizes their authority. Love that idea – it almost makes it like a…demonocracy.

Crowley feels responsible towards the overall protection of demonkind. This is somewhat suggested in canon, such as when Crowley refers to Bobby Singer as being a surge to “his kind.” But it doesn’t have quite the paternalistic quality to it, compared to in the fic when Crowley gets angry that Abaddon is using “his subjects” as cannon fodder against angels. “Yes, they were traitorous, weak-minded prats, but they were still his.”

But the most significant aspect of Hell and demons this fic explores – in my opinion – is how Hell turns souls into demons. Falling Skies delves into Crowley’s own torture on the rack, “he kept seeing flashes – brief, vivid visions, memories” of “blood and laughter and screaming ad begging and pain.”

Souls are strapped to the rack and torn apart, “destroyed brick by brick…violated and torn down” and then, made into a demon, “pieced back together into something else…something evil. Something poisonous and wrong.” This unmaking so as to create from the ruins departs from the idea that a soul caves or gives into to evil in Hell, and instead invests in the idea that it is something done to them, that it is a perversion of everything that they are, which in my opinion is a much more compelling take on demons.

Hell doesn’t only take a soul’s humanity, it takes their memories as well. Crowley references how “his torture in Hell had been enough to erase almost every part of his human life. He honestly only knew the barest details of the man that was Fergus.”

What he does remember is primarily the bad memories, as if Hell intentionally allowed him to hold onto those memories to either fuel his damnation or to discourage him from being nostalgic for his human life.

Much of what Crowley actually feels, even as a demon, is suppressed, “drowned in smoke”, numbing him to his actions and clouding his own thoughts and emotions in Hell’s influence. “He’d never realized how much he’d lost, how much he’d blocked out, how much he hadn’t even thought was worth remembering.”

All of this significantly influenced my own ideas about what it meant to be a demon – to be a semi-cured demon – and Crowley’s existential struggle.

Some smaller, more personal characteristics of Crowley that this fic influenced in my own writing include:

Crowley being a cook, and rolling his eyes at the boys fearing he’s going to poison them

Crowley referring to or thinking of the Winchesters as “his humans” rather than him being “their demon”

Crowley stating in fanfiction long before that final scene in 12x23 that he “always wins”

pointing out how even before the cure, he has carried his own weight in the saving-the-world department. “Who helped you stop the apocalypse? Me. Who helped you take out Castiel when he tried to pay god? Me. Who helped you stop Dick and his cronies? Me! ARE YOU NOTICING A TREND HERE?”

In this fic, Crowley takes a younger meatsuit – the son of his canon meatsuit. Which made me very uncomfortable and felt hypocritical, because by this point, Crowley is very much one of the good guys and should have had qualms about that. But then angelic powers make it possible for Crowley to take that meatsuit and the person is snapped back into existence, whole and unaware, and Crowley is visibly relieved by that. Vessels and meatsuits has always been something that the canon never properly addressed or explored. And while Crowley taking just a younger version of his vessel felt like ageism here, at least the author addressed the moral complications of his choice.

Crowley’s central, guiding concept of redemption and what it means to do the right thing was also established for me in this fic.

He has the chance to murder the demon that tortured him, that led him on his path to damnation. The demon attempts to play the mortality card, telling Crowley to “kill again and blacken your heart even more.” And Crowley, in perfect character, replies “in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Crowley truly believes himself to be beyond redemption, but that he can use his damnation as another resource in the larger fight for what is right. If he’s already damned, no reason to hold back – he can do the ugly, messy things the others can’t, what might even need to be done to secure the win for Team Free Will.

He reflects on his changing perspective of morality, how he thought good and evil were just human concepts that got in way, that people mistakenly draw line between good and evil when really it’s a spectrum that people move up and down all the time.

What he comes to believe in, with his semi-restored humanity, is choices. “That night that Sam had injected him with human blood, that night he’d come close to being saved (or doomed?), he had seen the darkness inside of himself, and he had hated it…there was good and evil within everyone, or at least the potential for it. What mattered was what side you chose, or at least which you chose the most often, which you kept trying to fight your way back to…For the time being, Crowley was not evil. And really, he rather liked that.”

That idea of Crowley fighting his way back to a better version of himself, to his morality and humanity being defined by his choices – that is central to me in Crowley’s character and road to redemption.

Much of Crowley’s relationship with the boys post-cure for me was based on this fic as well.

With the cure coursing through him, seeing Dean as an actual person for the first time.

His professional respect for them morphing into admiration, into protectiveness, because “they tried. And that should count for something, damn it.”

His understanding that the boys’ don’t just use people up – they do so by giving them something to believe in, something to fight for, and letting the cause use them up.

Dean making a deal with the angels to kill the King of Hell, and being unable to go through with it, then choosing to stand between Crowley and the angels.

Crowley recognizing his and Cas’ similarities, discussing with him the benefits and difficulties of being human or semi-human.

He and Cas getting a drink together and sharing their woes.

Cas admitting that his old angelic biases being in the way of seeing before how alike they are.

Crowley and Cas joking that in their team-up, Crowley is Dean and Cas is Sam.

Idea explored in this fic that I loved and want to flesh out in a fic:

Closing the Gates of Hell means all the demons, including Crowley, will be trapped down there forever. And a) Crowley considers or b) the Winchesters consider without telling Crowley - turning him human so that he won’t be trapped down there with demonkind.

A third or even second attempt at the cure might not be possible, or not take full effect.

Turning a soul into a demon takes proper time, that “hurrying the torture, letting out the souls before they’re fully cooked…churning out demons with bits of human still left in them. You’d think it would make them less dangerous, but it just makes them a hell of a lot worse. They’re out of their minds and out of control.”

And I very much appreciated that it referenced the reality that in killing a possessed meatsuit, the boys were killing a victim, a possessed person. That is something that sort of fell away and became an acceptable collateral damage, and never sat very well with me.

Falling Skies also introduced a loyal lackey for Crowley by the name of Laharl who I loved as a character. Crowley very much needed that someone in later seasons.

Castiel attempting to heal Crowley, and him suffering an instinctual fear that the angel intends to smite him.

The boys – and Crowley – struggling with the unwelcome knowledge that if Crowley chooses to become king again, there will come a time when their interests don’t align, and they will have to be enemies again. How much Crowley doesn’t want that, can’t bear the thought he might hurt them again.

I know this is a really long review. And I honestly don’t expect anyone to read it all the way through. I wrote it more for myself than anything. Because, even though there is plenty about the way that I write Crowley that differs from the way this author did, there is also so much here that influenced my understanding of him and his road to redemption. When there was no other fanfiction about Crowley fighting his way out of the dark, about choosing the Winchesters and to be better, there was Falling Skies. And I will always be immensely grateful for that.

Read the fic on AO3

[youchangedme]

i think sam really had the potential to be a main character alongsie dean if the writers made something compelling with their codependency.

I'm having a hard time to form a Coherent thought in English so forgive me but what I'm trying to say is imagine if dean and sam were:

1. each other mirrors but going into different directions (which they kinda were - dean, a nonbeliever, heaven vs. sam, a believer, hell - etc. but it wasn't like a plot thing, it was just there a little bit on accident)

2. and their codependency maxed out but to a point where they literally cannot make a decision & nothing in the plot can happen without the other. because the show kind of overpowered dean, and turned sam into a plot device to fuel dean. I think it would've been so much more compelling if each of them had certain personality trait that corresponded to the other. Like you know, when one character has the brains but lacks heart but the other has the heart but lacks brains - more nuanced obviously but I think you get the idea? (which the show did, but again it was superficial and once again, all the interesting traits were given to dean while none of what dean lacked in terms of personality was filled up by Sam, especially in the later seasons)

3. for this to be possible the show would have to have more side characters, because the only way for us to see how they are both very different BUT equally important (other than Sam and Dean having Talks) is showing us how differently they interact with other characters. ESPECIALLY Sam.

4. give Sam more backstory. all the back story seems to belong to dean - Sam was just there. why don't we torment little Sammy too? why not give Sammy natural demonic powers strong enough to make John afraid of him? why not imply that sometimes John left little Sammy with dean for days because he was too afraid of his sleep talking in unknown languages to come back to the motel....

so yeah. point is there was Huge potential to have two main characters, with capital M. but the show would have to be planned from the start, with less censorship and with someone else playing Sam. no hate on Jared I just think he's too average of an actor to portray what would be needed to make Sam and Dean equally compelling.

if you read this then thank you very much. I've never had anyone to tell this idea to.

you’re absolutely right, especially on that last part. jensen was so perfect for his role and i think in order for sam and dean to play more like equals on screen they needed someone to match jensen’s talent and intensity. 

like you said, a big part of the problem is that a majority of supernatural wasn’t actually planned out and eventually the story was just moving from season to season, often completely retconning the plot and their character development which was. annoying to say the least. 

i think a big part of where they went wrong with sam, especially as a Main Character is that they literally never show how he feels. the show always seems to tell us directly how he feels about something which just doesn’t hit as hard or as genuinely as the most emotional dean moments have because they painted dean as someone who’s horribly out of touch with his emotions when it’s literally the opposite

and sam and dean did have the capacity to be good character foils for each other, but the writing team just sucks and thinks any difference between them means they have to have the same Winchester Brothers’ Fight for like the millionth time instead of, you know. doing something new and interesting.

a huge part of why people stopped watching is because they got tired of seeing the same emotional plot being recycled for years on end, which is also why the finale is such as slap in the face. s15 finally felt like something different and then they just put the uno reverse card on all of it. including trying to tell us sam is the main character again

[isolavirtuosa]

Maybe 1-5

[fanfiction] Dean/Castiel

Canon Compliant Coda

One minute I was sitting on the porch, having a beer with Bobby, and the next I was standing in the bunker next to an equally confused-looking Sam.

Parts 1-5

- 1 -

  One minute I was sitting on the porch, having a beer with Bobby, and the next I was standing in the bunker next to an equally confused-looking Sam.

“What the hell, Sammy,” I grumbled, staring at the once-familiar wall of the dungeon in front of us.

“I have no idea,” Sam said, brows furrowing.

“Dad?”

We both whirled around, my hand going for a gun that was long since gone.

“Dean?” Sam said, but the tone was all wrong.  That wasn’t how he said my name.

“Dad?” the man repeated.  He was tall, with brown hair that was longer than it needed to be, and it was obvious enough even for those of us who had no idea what was going on.

“This is Junior?” I asked Sam’s back as he was already moving to wrap his son in a hug.

The hug went on for a lot longer than I thought was necessary, and then my brother was turning around and gesturing to me with a warm smile.  “This is your Uncle Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean Junior said, his eyes a little wide.

Apparently my reputation preceded me.  “Hey yourself,” I responded, swaggering over to him.

I was suddenly wrapped in a very tight hug.

“Um, I guess you’re a hugger,” I said, patting his back awkwardly for a moment before finally just giving in to hugging my only nephew.

Sam was grinning like an idiot.

“I can’t believe you’re both here,” Dean breathed as he pulled away.  “I mean, it worked.”

“Um, what exactly is it that worked?” Sam asked.

“Castiel’s spell,” he said, like that explained perfectly why my brother and I had been ripped out of heaven and brought back to earth.

“Wait, Cass is-” I started to say, even as Castiel was slipping out of the shadows.

“Hello, Sam,” he said, nodding at my brother.  He paused, looking at me meaningfully.  “Dean.”

“Cass!” Sam said, and then there was even more unnecessary hugging.  He squeezed Castiel tightly, and when he let him go, he turned an expectant glance on me.

I stared pointedly at the wall.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve brought you here,” Castiel began to say.

“What’s up with you two?” Sam asked, gesturing between us.

“Nothing,” I said, which was swallowed up by Castiel’s very loud declaration that, “Dean is uncomfortable about my homosexual feelings towards him.”

“Wait, what?” Sam said, squinting at me.

“Cass, you know that’s not true,” I ground out, annoyed.

“Angels have sexual preferences?” Dean asked, scratching at his stubble.  “I kind of thought you were all asexual.”

“We mostly lack human desires,” Castiel agreed.  “Of course, some angels have-”

“Nobody needs a lesson on the sexual exploits of angels,” I interrupted him.

“I think I might,” Dean said, looking genuinely perplexed.  “I mean, all these years, and I never once…  But I guess now that I’ve heard it out loud, it’s starting to…  Yeah, I mean, Castiel talks about you a lot.  A lot a lot.  And he gets this soft expression on his face, and-”

“‘All these years?’” I repeated slowly, feeling my face harden even more.  “You’ve been helping Junior out for years?” I asked Castiel angrily.

“Other Dean needed my help-”

“Great, Cass, just great, so glad you could be there for him,” I said.  “Can we just move on to the part where you explain why the hell we’re here, and then get us back to fucking heaven where we belong?”

Castiel breathed out heavily, his lower lip sticking out slightly.

It was a ridiculous expression that looked completely out of place on his face, and I wanted to tell him so, but…

“You were not exaggerating,” Dean marveled to Sam, still staring at me in awe.

I was starting to wonder what exactly my brother had told my namesake about me.  “I need a beer,” I decided, throwing the dungeon door open and making my way towards the kitchen.

“Wow, look what the cat dragged in.”

At first the woman sitting with her boots kicked up on the table was unrecognizable.  Her gray hair flowed around her face in curls, wrinkles etched across a face with surprisingly youthful-looking blue eyes.

“…Claire…?” I asked incredulously.

She grinned at me.

“How are you still alive?” I asked, still trying to process this elderly woman as the young girl I’d last seen.

“Some of us are actually good at hunting,” she said with a smirk and a twinkle in her eyes.

I didn’t know what to do with that.  “I need a beer,” I decided, disappearing into the kitchen.

“Grab one for me!” Claire called after me.

“Can elderly people drink?” I replied, digging through the fridge and pulling out two tall bottles which were hopefully beer, the brand name unrecognizable to me.

“We can drink Dean Winchester under the table!” she called, a laugh in her voice.

I returned with the bottles, and Claire accepted hers, taking a long drink.

“That hits the spot after a long day of raising assholes from the dead,” she declared.

I sat next to her, running my fingers over the names etched into the table.  There were more now, covering the table from end-to-end.

“We decided the table had a nice nostalgic vibe to it,” she said, before nodding her head around the room.  “Updated everything else from the prehistoric nonsense you had in here before, though.”

There were screens and flashing lights everywhere.  It seemed pretty fucking awful to me, but hopefully whatever fool’s errand had brought us back here would be over and done with quickly.

Claire finished her beer, letting the empty bottle hit the table with a loud clink.  “I guess that’s an okay start, but you’re gonna need to keep ‘em comin’.”

“Slow down, grandma, I don’t want to have to pick you up off of the floor.”

She snorted.  “How the fuck old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know, a hundred?”

She laughed even harder.  “Oh, god, you are precious.  I am the picture of youth and vitality.  You like music from the freaking 1970s and dress like an elderly lumberjack.”

I touched my flannel shirt self-consciously.

“And Jimmy certainly made a choice with that body,” she said, looking me up and down, and grinning madly.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked irritably.  “…and also, ‘Jimmy’?”

“That’s just my nickname for Castiel,” she said, ignoring the rest of my question.  “It’s an inside joke, and there’s pretty much no one left alive who gets it anymore.”

“So you two have gotten close?”

“Well, I mean, we’re not having constant crises that require heavenly intervention like back in the Winchester days, but yeah, Jimmy’s always here to bail us out when things get rough.”

“Fucking fantastic,” I said, downing the rest of my beer.

“Oh my god, you really are mad,” she marveled at me.

“What am I mad about?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“That Jimmy looooooves you,” she swooned at me.

“You know what, you’re right,” I said, standing up.  “You’re not elderly at all, you’re twelve.”

“Takes one to know one,” Claire cackled at my retreating back as I took the glass bottles back to the kitchen.

There was a loud bustling back in the other room, signaling that the others had finally come up to join us.

Everyone stared at me expectantly as I came back into the room.  I looked at them blankly, handing Claire another beer and opening my own.

“So, did Claire fill you in about Temeluchus…?” Sam asked.

“Who in the what now?” I asked, taking a drink and specifically not looking at Castiel.

“And how the Michael sword and the Lucifer sword are the only way to seal him…?” Sam asked.

“That sounds like a pain in the ass.”

“They need our blood-” Sam continued.

“You know, I really don’t need the details,” I said.  “Tell me what to do, we save the world, we go back.  Right?”

“Right,” Castiel confirmed.

“Okay then,” I said.  “Let’s save the world.”

 - 2 -

  They put us in the guest room that night.

“Being alive is weird,” I decided, studying the back of my hand.  “You gotta piss and shit and sleep…”

“And alcohol actually gets you drunk?” Sam suggested from the twin bed next to mine.

“Well, that part’s not so bad,” I said, letting my hand drop to my stomach.  “I could get into that part.”

“Maybe if you pray to Jack, he’ll let you get drunk in heaven, too.”

“Don’t need to be drunk in heaven.”

Sam sighed.  “It’s weird for me, too, you know.  To be back here.”

“I was never here.”

I heard him breathe in sharply at that, almost like a flinch of pain.

“And that’s okay,” I continued.  “I did my part, then my story was over.”

“We always felt you with us.”

“…Sammy, that is some new agey bullcrap.”

“It doesn’t make it less true.”

“So Cass helped you on cases.”

“That’s a bit of a non-sequitur.”

“Is it?” I asked, mostly because I didn’t know what a non-sequitur was.

“Well, I guess we were talking about our feelings, and then you brought up Cass, so actually, no, I do see where you’re coming from,” Sam decided.

“We were not talking about our feelings,” I said, offended.

“Of course not,” Sam replied in that patronizing way of his.  “Manly men don’t have feelings.”

“Damn straight.”

“So about your best friend Cass…”

“Did you want us to braid each other’s hair and exchange friendship bracelets?” I grumbled.

“I was thinking about more maybe just actually having a conversation…?” Sam suggested.  “Seriously, Dean, what is going on between you two?”

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“Oh, yeah, sure, okay.”

The smart play would be to not respond to Sam’s sarcasm, and just let the conversation die.

Sam sighed loudly.

I ignored him.

He sighed again.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

There was the sound of movement from Sam’s bed, which was the only warning I got before something crashed into my chest.

The smart play would be to just hold the pillow hostage and continue to ignore him.

Unfortunately, Sam knew that I could never possibly ignore such an obvious affront.

I threw the pillow back at him as hard as possible.

He was sitting up now, and caught it with a grunt.  “Dean, is this really…  I mean, you’re not actually bothered that Cass has feelings for you, right?”

“Of course I don’t care,” I growled, but I could already feel the anger dissipating.  Somehow I’d gotten better at letting go of things.  “I mean, of course I care.  About Cass.  About… whatever.  Feelings and shit.  I just… he dropped that bomb at me, and then he left.”

“He didn’t really leave so much as die…”

“He didn’t come back, Sammy.”

“He’s right here, Dean.  In the next room.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.  He’s here on earth.  He’s helping Junior.  He’s bonding with Claire.  He was even freaking helping you on cases before you moved on.”

Sam put his pillow down and seemed to lean forward, straining to see me in the dark.  “Dean, what are you saying?  Have you not seen Cass since he was taken by the Empty?”

“You just figured that out?”

“Wait, not even once?”

“He came once.”

“Okay…?”

“A little after you moved on,” I said, lying back down.  I closed my eyes again.

“…and did something happen?” Sam prodded me when I didn’t go on.

“Hello, Dean.”

My head was under the Impala’s hood, and his sudden appearance startled me so much I shot up and banged my head.  “Shit!  Ow!”

“I, uh… apologies…” Castiel trailed off, looking at me uncertainly.

“It’s fine, you just surprised me,” I said, straightening up and taking my hand from my aching head.  “You’re… here.”

“Yes, that is where I am,” he agreed.

I stared at him.

He stared back.

It felt like just yesterday that I’d last seen him, yet it felt like a hundred years ago.

Time moved differently in heaven.

“You look well,” Castiel finally said, breaking the silence.

“Being dead does that for a guy,” I said, trying to be glib.  Trying to break up the tension.

“It’s certainly true that a human can choose their favored appearance in heaven,” he said.

We weren’t saying anything that mattered.

“Dean, are you angry with me?” he asked, easily picking up on my frustration.

“Why would I be angry with you?” I replied, shaking my head.

“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” he said, his head bowed slightly.

“Kinda, yeah,” I agreed.

“I’ll go.”

“What the hell, Cass.”

He forced a smile at me.  “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” I said, the anger rising in my voice.

“It’s okay, I understand.”

“What exactly is it that you understand, because I don’t get you at all right now.”

He looked at me.

“Cass,” I said looking back.  I felt like something I hadn’t even realized was missing was suddenly right in front of me, but I couldn’t reach it.

“This isn’t how it usually goes,” he said after a pause.

“How what goes?”

“Us,” he said, gesturing between us.

“Then stop being so damn awkward.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“How am I being awkward?”

“Well, usually after I sacrifice myself for you, you say something like, ‘Cass, you are not dead, I am very pleased’, followed by a customary embrace in which you try not to show me your emotional face by making the embrace unnaturally long in order to get control of yourself.”

I tried to protest that, but all I could do was open and close my mouth like a fish.

“I understand if physical proximity is… no longer appropriate,” he continued.

“For Christ’s sake, can we just forget about what you said and go back to normal?” I asked irritably.

Cass’s expression hardened.  “No, Dean, we will not forget about what I said.”

I sighed.  “That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it though?”

“Whatever, Cass,” I said, turning my back on him and going back under the hood.  We both needed to take a step back or this was just going to keep on getting stupider.

And then he fucking left.

“Dean?” Sam prodded me.

“Just Cass being Cass,” I said, waving it off.  “He makes stupid assumptions about things.”

“Does he?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” I growled at him.

“So you’re not being a homophobic dick about him telling you that he loves you?”

“You know me better than that,” I complained.

“I know you well enough to know that feelings make you uncomfortable,” he said.  “Especially things you have no experience with.”

I clicked my tongue in annoyance.

“Cass said these bodies will only stay bonded to our souls for three days,” he said.  “All I’m saying is that maybe before we go back to heaven, you should figure your shit out.”

“Maybe you should figure your shit out,” I grumbled back at him.

“My shit is very figured, thanks.”

I rolled my eyes, but it was true.  My little brother had it together.  “Junior seems competent.”

“Yeah, he can hold his own,” Sam said, and I could hear the beaming dad-pride in his voice.

“I’m glad I could finally meet him,” I said, continuing down this little rabbit hole so we didn’t have to talk about me anymore.

“Me, too.”

“Hey, Claire got old, though, huh?”

“Dean, we all got old,” he scoffed at me.

“Yeah, but…” I started to say, hesitating.  “Claire just… always reminded me a lot of me, you know?  Didn’t know if she would…”

“She changed a lot after Kaia came back,” Sam put in quickly.  We never lingered too long over that kind of talk, no matter how much heaven had chilled us out.

“Did she?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Started hunting smarter.  Hunting less.  Making time for a life.”

“Good for her,” I said softly.  She’d figured it out before it was too late.

We were both quiet with our own thoughts after that, and eventually I remembered how to sleep.

 - 3 -

  “Hell no,” I said emphatically.

“Dean, no one uses gas-powered cars anymore,” Sam said, rolling his eyes at me.

We all stood in the garage, staring at the monstrosity that these hunters dared to call a ‘car’.  It was some froufrou, electric-powered nonsense, and there was no way I was getting in that thing.

“Impala or I walk.”

“The Impala hasn’t run in twenty years,” Dean Junior said.

“What did you do to my baby?” I asked, mortified.

“It’s a fucking old car, Grandpa,” Claire taunted me.  “They break down.”

While Claire and I stood there arguing, everyone else climbed into the monstrosity, with Junior and Sam in the front and the angel in the back.

“Looks like they’re leaving without you,” Claire said unhelpfully.

I clenched my jaw.

“You coming, Uncle Dean?” Junior asked, leaning out the window and giving me a shit-eating grin worthy of the Winchester name.

“Move over, chuckles, I’m driving,” I growled, stomping over to them.

“It’s a self-driving car, Dean,” Sam said, showing exactly where his son got that damn grin.

“Then I call shotgun,” I said, glaring at the two of them.

“Sorry, rules are rules, and Dad already called shotgun,” Dean said with a shrug.

I looked at them.

I looked at Castiel sitting in the back.

I looked back at them.

I focused on Sam.

He shrugged, unable to stop giving me that grin.

I sighed loudly.

“I can teleport there,” Castiel said, looking like some kicked puppy.

“Cass, no,” Sam said immediately, at the same time as Dean protested, “we need your help with the spell before we get there.”

And I looked like the jackass again.  “It’s fine,” I said, opening the door and getting in beside Castiel.

“Have fun, boys,” Claire said, waving to us as the car started to move out of the garage.

Castiel sat ramrod straight next to me, eyes forward.

I wanted things to be right between us again, I just had no idea where to start, and it certainly wasn’t going to happen with Nosy and Nosier sitting in the front.  “Do these joke machines have tunes?” I asked instead.

Sam groaned, slumping back against his seat, while Dean looked over his shoulder to give me a huge grin.  “I’ve got the perfect playlist.”

The familiar guitar riff of Ramble On suddenly filled the car.

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy!” I said, hitting the back of Sam’s seat excitedly.  “Is your son a Zeppelin fan?!”

“Don’t remind me,” Sam said, and I could feel his eye roll even though I was behind him.

“Dad had all your old tapes in the Impala,” Dean said, drumming his fingers against the console.  “We used to just drive and drive, listening to them on repeat.”

For some reason, that put a lump in my throat.

“Of course, then he would plug his phone in and make us listen to old crap like Deathcab For Cutie…” Dean continued.

I cracked up.  “Did he follow it up with some Celine Dion?”

“That was his freaking wedding song,” Dean said, making me laugh harder.

“So hilarious,” Sam grumbled.  “…The Power of Love is a damn good song,” he added under his breath.

“Looks like Junior is more Winchester than Sammy,” I said, patting my nephew on the shoulder and feeling pleased.

The next hour passed very pleasantly with me and Dean belting out classic rock while Sam pretended that he hated it.

At some point I glanced over at Cass, and he was looking at me softly, smiling like a creep.  He immediately looked away when he realized he’d been caught.

I continued singing, but I bumped my knee lightly against his.

He looked surprised, but then he smiled again, so I figure that was a good enough olive branch for the time being.

Of course, the longer we drove, the harder it was to ignore how fucking weird the world had gotten.

“You can’t even enjoy the road anymore,” I complained, watching as we passed an endless line of self-driving cars in yet another underground tunnel.  “The open air, your hand on the wheel…”

“As you did not typically allow others to drive, I don’t think we really experienced any difference in the transition to driver-less,” Castiel said, speaking for the first time.

“Ha,” Sam said.

Cass glanced nervously at me, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to make jokes anymore.

“Shut up, smartass,” I said, smacking him in the arm.

He looked relieved, but that kind of pissed me off.  Why did he think he had to walk on eggshells with me?  Why couldn’t he just be normal?  Was I really so awful to him?

“How about we stop and get some food?” I suggested, ready for a change of scenery.

That also turned out to be a terrible idea.

“Why are the burgers not made of meat?” I asked Sam, low and threatening.

“It’s better for the environment,” he explained.  “And for your health.”

“Samuel,” I said, my voice getting lower.  “I will have my meat.”

“Having a tofu burger just this once won’t kill you.”

“Yes, I think it will,” I said, jabbing my finger into his ridiculously broad chest.

“Dean, we need to meet Mellie and Rowena tonight, so we don’t really have time for this,” Sam tried to explain to me logically.

“I already rode around in your abomination of a vehicle all day, and now you’re telling me that I need to eat a… t-to…” I tried to get the word out, but it stuck in my throat.

“I’ll go pick up the food since none of you have any money,” Dean said, getting out of the car and moving towards the so-called burger joint.

“You bring me a real burger, kid, you hear me?” I called after him.

“I’m older than you, Uncle Dean!” he called back.

Sam followed after him, laughing.

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” I grumbled, getting back inside the vehicle.  “I’ve lived longer than the brat, even if my body is… however old it is.”

“Thirty-nine,” Castiel said.

“That’s oddly specific.”

“Yes, well I had to choose which template of you two to form,” he said.  “I thought the time we spent fathering Jack together when he was a baby was nice, so I went with those bodies.”

“When Jack was a baby…”

“Yes, before he lost his soul,” Castiel said.

“You are so… you,” I decided.

“Yes, that is who I am.”

“You were… happy then?”

“Yes, very,” Castiel said.  “I was able to become a father and raise my son with his other two fathers.”

“I don’t think that’s how biology works.”

“How would you know?” he scoffed at me.

My jaw dropped and all I could do was stare at him, wide-eyed.  “Are you calling me stupid?”

“A little bit, yes.”

“Asshole,” I said, but I was smiling anyway.

Castiel looked pleased with himself, which made me feel… something I didn’t want to think about.

“So baby grows up and you leave the other two fathers behind?” I asked, deciding to pick a fight instead.  “No, wait, it was only the one father that you cut out of your life.”

“Dean,” he said, sounding weary.

“Oh, no, Cass, it’s totally cool that you decided to move on with your life and never talk to me again.”

“Dean Winchester, I did no such thing,” he said, his tone starting to get angrier.  “You are the one who didn’t want me around.”

“And how exactly did you arrive at that conclusion?” I asked him incredulously.

“You didn’t pray to me.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.  “I didn’t know that I had to pray to the holy and powerful angel of the Lord Castiel to get him to deign to come and see me.”

“Prayer has never been like that between us,” he said, frowning.  “It’s our way of communicating long distance.  I treasure the prayers you send to me.”

“So that’s why you didn’t answer me all those times,” I grumbled shittily.

“If anyone can understand putting duty over matters of the heart…”

“So it was your duty to take care of Sammy and Junior… and Claire… and who the fuck knows who else… but not me?”

“Yes, Dean, that is correct,” Castiel said, blue eyes lasering into mine.  He opened his mouth to say something else, when the door to the car flew open.

“I’ve got burgers,” Dean Junior declared, getting into the car and tossing a paper bag to Castiel.

It bounced off his chest and slid to the floor.

Cass did not react.

“Uh, am I interrupting something?” Dean asked, looking between us leerily.

“No,” I said, at the same time that Castiel said, “yes.”

“You two were actually talking?” Sam asked, sliding into his own seat and passing me a bag.

“No,” I grumbled, digging through the bag and pulling out my burger.

“Yes,” Castiel said contrarily, still ignoring his food on the floor.

I unwrapped my burger and took a big bite.  I chewed thoughtfully.  There was something… different…  I looked at Sam in horror as a flash lit up the backseat.  My eyes shifted to Dean, who was looking pointedly forward as the car pulled out from the rest stop.  “Dean Junior.”

“Yes, Uncle Dean?”

“Dean Junior, you and I haven’t known each other long.”

“Less than a day,” he agreed.

“Less than a day,” I said.  “And in that day, I haven’t asked for much, have I?”

“Well, you wanted to ride around in a busted gas guzzler-”

“Dean Junior, I haven’t asked for much,” I repeated.  “As you may know, I died about fifty years ago, for about the… two hundredth and final time, after sacrificing my life to save the world so many goddamn times.”

“Dad did mention that, yeah.”

“So many goddamn times,” I repeated.  “And yet, I am a simple man.”

Cass snorted at that.

“Some might even say you are a meat man,” Sam put in.

Cass flat out chortled at that.

“Interesting that you mention that, Sam,” I said.  “Interesting that you mention my know predilection for meat products, when you have schemed here with your son to bring me this faux meat bullshit.”

“Yeah, okay, but the look on your face,” Sam explained, holding up Dean’s holophone and showing the picture of my mortified-looking face as I held the offending ‘burger’ away from me.

“Dean Junior, tell me the truth,” I said, eyes boring into my namesake’s.  “Were you talked into this by your embarrassingly uncreative father who knows nothing of true pranks and hijinks?”

“I was,” he said solemnly.  “Dad promised it would be hilarious.”

“And was it hilarious?” I asked.

“I mean, you just made this whole ridiculous speech, so I’m going to have to say yes?”

“Oh, Dean Junior,” I said, shaking my head.  “You know nothing.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone thought it was hilarious, Dean,” Sam put in, gesturing between Castiel and Dean, who did in fact look like they thought it was hilarious.

“Simpletons,” I said, shaking my head.  “I have been gone too long.  But don’t worry.  You will remember.”

Sam was looking at me like I was crazy.

“Now where is my goddamn burger?” I asked, shoving the tofu burger back in its bag and throwing it at Sam.

“On the floor,” he said, nodding his head towards Castiel’s bag.

“Jackass,” I grumbled, picking the bag up.

“Like Cass would have eaten it,” Sam said with a shrug.

“Molecules,” Castiel agreed.

I unwrapped it and took a big bite, only to see that damn flash in my face again.  “You motherfucker,” I said, throwing the tofu burger at Sam’s head and sticking the landing.

“Childish much?” Sam said, grinning like a loon.

“My revenge will be all-consuming,” I said, slumping back in my seat and crossing my arms over my chest.  “All-consuming.”

“Mm-hm,” Sam said, flipping through the pictures on the phone and laughing to himself.

 - 4 -

  “Dean.”

I woke up with a start, breathing in through my nose sharply.  My head rested against something hard and unyielding, but somehow familiar and warm.

I was drooling on Cass’s trenchcoat.

“If you do not mind,” he said, looking at me uncomfortably and holding his body stiffly, trying to keep himself as far away from me as possible.

“Shit,” I muttered, shooting back up to a sitting position.  “What, am I that repulsive to you?”

“Dean, you were drooling.”

“And you loved every second of it.”

Castiel looked startled, then frowned.

I groused and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.  “We almost there?”

“About an hour out,” Sam said from the front.  “Maybe a little less if traffic is light.”

“Great,” I said, staring out the window at the endless tunnels.  The future sucked.

We finally pulled into our seedy motel, which was a lot shinier and more electronic than I remembered seedy motels being, and then there was Mellie, standing out in the parking lot with a cock to her hip and a grin on her face.

“Hey, boys,” she said, waving us over.

“Mellie,” Dean Junior said, giving her a quick hug.

“Sam Winchester, is that you?” she asked, looking my brother up and down in amusement.

“It’s me,” Sam said, holding his arms out to her.

“Damn, my mom never told me how hot you were when you were younger,” she said, throwing her arms around him enthusiastically.

“Er…” he trailed off, patting Mellie’s back awkwardly.

“That must be difficult for Sam’s ego, as he has always believed himself to be hot,” Castiel murmured.

I cracked up, turning to grin at him.

Cass gave me a pleased look.

I forgot how much he was pissing me off for a moment and slung my arm around his shoulder, leaning in close to his ear.  “So who the hell is this chick again?”

“Mellie Hanscom,” Cas explained.

“No shit?  She’s Donna’s kid?”

“Perhaps in human years she would be considered an adult female.”

“I got that, Cass, thank you,” I said, patting his chest as I pushed away and moved towards the other three.  “Hey there, Mellie,” I said, giving her my best Dean Winchester smoulder.

“Hi,” she said, smiling back before turning to Sam.  “So this is your little brother?”

Sam’s lips twitched into a smile.  “My older brother, yeah.”

“Oh,” Mellie said with a slight frown.  “I thought he’d be taller.”

“Is this Shit on Dean Day?” I asked no one in particular.

“You sounded taller in my mom’s stories,” she clarified.

“He has always been this short,” Sam said helpfully.

“Everyone besides the Jolly Green Giant here is shorter than me,” I said incredulously.

“Why is Dad green…?” Dean asked, rubbing his stubble and looking genuinely perplexed.

“I don’t get it,” Mellie agreed.

“Dean, they don’t understand your references, either,” Castiel commented, pleased.

“Everyone knows who the freakin’ Jolly Green Giant is!” I said, exasperated.

“Yes, the large green man in a leaf toga who makes canned corn,” he said, nodding his head thoughtfully.

Everyone had their laugh at my expense and then we finally got down to business.

“We summon Rowena, she does the Rite of Blood, and that starts preparing your bodies for the final ritual,” Mellie explained as she wrote a sigil on the door in her blood.

“Just tell me where to stand,” I said, not really thinking too much about all the blood and the letting of it in preparation to remove mine.

“Anywhere’s fine,” Mellie said, smiling at me cheerfully as she wiped her hands clean on a motel towel.

“We ready?” Dean asked.  When he received an affirmative, he started chanting in Latin.

“This is so boring,” I commented to Sam after about five minutes of it.

“This used to be our lives,” Sam said, giving me a rueful smile.

“Was it?” I asked, shaking my head.  “Man, I cannot wait to get back home.”

“Yeah…” Sam said.  “It’s been good to see Dean, though.  To have you two meet.”

“He’ll be with us before you know it,” I said with a shrug.

“That should sound ominous, but it’s weirdly comforting,” he said, scrunching up his face in confusion.

“Hello, boys.”

We both looked back towards the door where Rowena now stood in all her hellish glory.

“Mellie, Wee Dean, lovely of you to orchestrate this reunion,” she said, passing by them and pinching Dean on the cheek before slapping Mellie on the butt.

“I don’t understand any of these relationships…” I said.

“My, Samuel, this is certainly an improvement over the dour old man bit you had going on before,” Rowena hummed, squeezing Sam’s bicep.  “Now what say you we start this rite so I can get back to ruling my kingdom?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, shooting her a salute.

“Castiel, will you be joining us or remain sulking in the corner?” she asked, flashing him a bright smile.

“I will remain in the corner.”

Rowena chuckled at that, and suddenly she was pinning me down with her sharp gaze.  “Dean Winchester, it seems the rumors that you’ve been acting a right twat might be true.”

“Why is it always my fault?” I asked with a scowl.  “What, ’cause Cass is an angel?  Well, news flash, angels are dicks.”

“You certainly won’t broker any argument from me there,” Rowena said.  “But the real question is, how much of the angel’s dick have you seen?”

I just about spontaneously combusted.

“Rowena!” Sam cried, scandalized.

Mellie looked between us all with a fascinated look on her face.  “Wait, are Castiel and Dean a couple?!”

“No, we are not a friggin’ couple!” I snapped.  “I’m not gay!  Jesus.”

“Ah, that’s too bad,” Rowena said shaking her head.  “You two really are adorable together.  You know, my Fergus always was a bit sweet on you…  You seem to give off a very seductive aura that screams, ‘I’m the picture of toxic masculinity but also I’d like you to take me to bed and pull me apart slow-’”

“C-crowley was what now?” I asked, mortified.

“Ah, yes, he told me about the triplets,” Rowena said with a grin.

I clenched my jaw.  “We do not talk about the triplets.”

“You know, I’m not gay either,” Castiel put in from his corner.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“Angels have no gender,” he explained.  “We have taken to equating ourselves with the gender of our frequently used vessels in order to accommodate your human languages which require such explanation, but Enochian has no gender-specific pronouns.  I myself have always used vessels of either gender.”

Dean proceeded to make a series of incomprehensible noises.

Cass burst out laughing.

I stared between them, confused about a lot of things, but most specifically about what had just come out of my nephew’s mouth.

“Enochian,” Sam explained, shaking his head.

“Wait, Junior can speak Enochian?!”

Sam shrugged, clearly jealous that his progeny had accomplished something he never even dreamed possible.

“He’s very good,” Castiel said with a proud smile.  “If only he could free himself of his human form and speak through his light.”

“If only,” Dean agreed.

“Well, this is all very amusing and all, but time is precious,” Rowena said, gracing us all with a threatening smile.

“Let the bloodletting begin,” I said, holding out my wrists to her, more than happy to change the subject.

“Dean, dear, we’re doing a Rite of Blood, not a bloodletting,” she explained.  “Unless that’s what you’re into?”

“I am into whatever you are into, Rowena,” I said, upping the charm.

“Oh, I did miss you a teeny weeny bit,” she said, shooting me a flirty smile back, then shoving me backwards on the bed.

“Okay,” I said, going with it.

“Lie back and enjoy the ride, boys,” she said, then started chanting in Latin.

Sam’s weight landed next to me, and suddenly the room was buzzing with energy.

I started to feel like I was drunk, looking at all the pretty colors swirling over our heads.  The ceiling seemed to be getting closer and closer, and when I tilted my head to the side, I realized we were now floating off the bed.  I felt completely serene.

And then we crashed back onto the cheap motel bed, the mattress squeaking loudly in protest.

“And we’re done,” Rowena said, clapping her hands together.  “Boys, it’s been lovely,” she said, leaning into our vision.  “Samuel, stay strapping,” she said, patting his chest.  “Dean… well, you’ll figure it out, dear.”

“Huh?” I said, still woozy from the ritual.

Rowena just smiled and disappeared from my line of sight, saying her goodbyes to the others.

“Did it work?” Sam asked, trying to sit up only to flop right back down on the bed.

“Rowena said it did, so that’s good enough for me,” Dean said, coming to sit next to his father.  “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” Sam trailed off.

“High?” I suggested.

Sam nodded at me, a goofy smile on his face.  “High,” he agreed.

Dean and Mellie exchanged concerned looks.

“It’s a known side effect of the Rite of Blood,” Castiel explained.  “We should just let them sleep it off.”

Dean helped Castiel move Sam to the other bed, Sam laughing the whole way.

I caressed the comforter gently, rolling the texture between my fingers.

“Here you go,” Cass said, tugging off my boots and helping me into bed.

“Mm, thanks,” I hummed, rubbing my cheek against the pillow.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.  “Do you need liquid replenishment?”

“Nah, I’m okay,” I said, looking into his eyes for a moment and getting lost.

“I’ll watch over you tonight, if that’s all right with you,” he said, eyes taking on a questioning look.

“Okay,” I said, closing my eyes.  “My own freakin’ guardian angel.”

“Yes, your own freakin’ guardian angel,” Cass agreed, and then I was out like a light.

 - 5 -

  Sam and I sat in the back of the car together the next morning, sunglasses on and blankets wrapped around our shoulders.

“What the fuck did Rowena do to us?” I grumbled.

“She… activated our blood?” Sam said slowly, flinching at the sound of his own voice.

“And why the hell would blood ever have to be activated?”

“Something about… the ritual where they extract our blood to bind Temeluchus to the earth…?” he trailed off.

The front door of the car opened and Castiel slid in, leaning over the seat and putting a cup of hot coffee in my hands.

I felt myself smiling at him, and the smile was immediately returned.

He passed another cup to Sam, then faced forward again.

Dean slid in on the other side and started the car.

Mellie came over to us and the windows all rolled down.

“Great seeing you all,” she said, “but I need to haul ass back to Sioux Falls and get to work.”

Dean and Castiel gave her a proper goodbye while Sam and I mumbled something that might have sounded like human language, and then we were off.

I slept most of the morning despite the copious amounts of coffee I’d consumed, and slowly I started to feel like a human being again.  “Where are we going again?” I finally asked when I was ready to rejoin society.

“Lawrence,” Dean said.

“Of course,” I said.  “Back to Kansas.”

“Says the guy who will literally cross state lines just to pick up a damn pie,” Sam mumbled.

“I just don’t see why we couldn’t have summoned Rowena to the bunker,” I said with a shrug.  “Seems like this whole mission could go a lot smoother if we didn’t waste time floating around in these tin cans, getting high on blood rites…”

“I’m sorry, I would not have missed that for all the world,” Dean said with a snort.

Sam and I exchanged A Look.

“What does that mean?” Sam asked.

“It means you two were funny as shit last night,” Dean explained, and yet it explained nothing at all.

“We went to bed right after the ritual,” I said, Sam nodding his agreement.

“Oh, we tried to put you two to bed,” Dean said with a laugh.

“It was not successful,” Castiel agreed.  “You know, now that I think of it, memory loss is also one of the side effects of the ritual.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sam asked, looking between them nervously.

I just nodded my head, showing my support for Sam’s confusion.

“So you really don’t remember ordering room service?” Dean asked, giving us an amused look.

“Motels have room service in the future?” I asked, squinting at Sam.

He just shrugged.

“And then you had a race down the hall on the room service carts?” Dean continued.

“Oh, that sounds like us,” I said, relieved that we had just behaved like children and not actually done anything detrimentally stupid.

“I’m sorry, is it?” Dean asked with a laugh.  “I mean, my dad is such an… old man.”

“That is also true,” I agreed.  “Sammy certainly has the longest, thickest imaginable stick up his ass, but he occasionally knows how to pull it out and let his hair down.”

“Beautiful imagery, Dean,” Sam said.  “Who knew you had the sensitive soul of a poet?”

“I am a man of many talents.”

“So you also are accustomed to dancing on bars?” Dean asked, looking intrigued.

“I’m sorry, what?” Sam said again, as I nodded my agreement with him.

“Bars?  Dancing on them?”

“Isn’t that usually a thing that chicks do?” I asked, scratching at my stubble.

“And also something that the Winchester brothers apparently do,” Castiel contributed helpfully.

“I have never in my life danced on a bar,” I stated firmly.

Dean held up his phone, showing us both an image of what looked horrifyingly like me and Sammy, shaking our asses on a bar.

At least we were surrounded by a crowd of adoring-looking females.

“Listen, what happens during the Rite of Blood stays in the Rite of Blood,” I said.

“And your mother never needs to see that,” Sam added.

“Oh, I sent her the video.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“She showed it to all her friends in the nursing home.”

“…”

“The video is very funny,” Castiel put in, helping as usual.

Sam and I proceeded to stew in silence.

Apparently the next step in the ritual to bind the Angel Whatever-His-Name-Was involved another spell performed simultaneously on the north and south sides of the hospital where Sam and I were born.

“I thought we would be going to the cemetery, why the hospital?” Sam asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Because this is the power spot of Lawrence,” Castiel explained.  “It is where Mary pushed you both from her uterus, setting destiny into mo-”

“Dude, please do not ever talk about my mother’s uterus again,” I interrupted him, aghast.

“Yes, but Dean, it was a monumental event that only Mary, with her well-formed uterus, could-”

“What the hell did I just say.”

“‘Please do not ever talk about my mother’s uterus again,’” he repeated in a very disturbingly accurate impression of me.

“And yet you keep talking about it.”

“I do not think that Mary would take offense.”

“I take offense, Cass.”

Castiel suddenly disappeared.

“Uh, we kinda need him for the spell,” Dean said.

“Why do you have to pick a fight with him over everything?” Sam asked.

“Why am I always the bad guy?!” I demanded.

Castiel suddenly reappeared in the front seat.  “I talked to Mary, and she was not offended.”

“You what?” I asked.

“She seemed a little annoyed with you, though, Dean.”

“For what possible reason would my mother be annoyed with me?!”

“Don’t we need to begin the spell?” he asked, changing the subject like the asshole he was.

“We should get in position,” Dean agreed.

“Dean and I will take the south,” Sam chimed in quickly.

“That wouldn’t make sense,” Castiel said with a frown.  “One of you needs to be at the north.”

“No, my son Dean,” Sam clarified.

“Ah, you meant Other Dean.”

Dean Junior rolled his eyes but smiled.  “Come on, Dad,” he said, opening the door.

“Wait, what if I want to go with Junior?” I protested.

“Father-son bonding time,” Sam said, scrambling out of his side of the car, and he and Dean took off at a much faster walking pace than necessary.

“Do you really just call Junior ‘Other Dean’?” I asked, giving Cass a weird look.

“Of course,” he said, his brows scrunching in confusion.  “You are Dean.  He is not you.”

“You don’t think it’s just a little bit insulting to be called ‘Other’?”

“You call that same man who is older than you ‘Junior.’”

“I was born first.”

“Yes.  You are the original.  He is the Other Dean.”

“Weirdo,” I said, getting out of the car.  I wasn’t smiling because of Cass.

I caught him giving me that soft look of his again, his own mouth curving in a smile.

I ignored it and moved towards the north of the hospital.

Castiel drew up beside me, and when we’d reached a little grassy area that he deemed the correct spot, we started setting up the candles and drawing sigils.

When I was seated in the middle of the candles, I used Cass’s phone to message Sam.  “They’re almost ready,” I informed him.

“Good,” he said, shifting from side-to-side and scoping out the area.  The only light came leaking out from behind the curtained windows of the hospital, clouds covering up any light from the sky.  “Dean?”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“…are we still fighting?”

I looked at him.

His brows were drawn together and his lips were pushed out, and I couldn’t help but marvel that this dope was an angel.

“Do you still think that I’m angry with you because I’m uncomfortable about your feelings?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yeah, we’re still fighting.”

“Dean, I don’t understand.”

“Do you need me to draw you a friggin’ road map?”

“That would be helpful, yes.”

The phone buzzed.

“Ten seconds,” I said, and Castiel straightened up, ready to start.

We both counted down, and then I started lighting the candles and Castiel started chanting.  The wind picked up, but somehow the flames stayed lit, growing stronger and taller.  Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

Then a demon appeared and punched Castiel in the face.

[lengthofropes]

But. Just... Imagine this.

Some time from now, pandemic is over.

We’re on another SPN con, sitting on Jen & Mish panel.

Jensen got once again asked about the Dean’s heaven scene and the whole “reciprocate” thing.

He starts answering with a smile, but he’s damn serious about it. He is careful, not to hurt anyone’s feelings. He yet again softly speaks about Dean sexuality to be open, not to “put him in a box” and etc... Mish is sitting next to Jensen, smiling more kind of caring, than playfully, silently nods.

Yes. They both understand how important this is for us to hear these words finally in person, and seeing both of them. Together, sharing one stage.

Jensen is almost over with his answer, but suddenly he breaks his speech. Sitting silently for few seconds, biting his lip.

Then he holds his head up, looking at the audience. “Okay, I have to tell you this. I really have to, so fuck it!” The audience is dead silent and confused, but sure curious and exited.

“I have to speak for myself.

Yes, I really appreciate all your thoughts on this finale, and whatever your thoughts are, it doesn’t make you true fan, or not true fan. You all can have your own head canons, and I think that is beautiful and that what truly shows that you care about the Supernatural. That what makes you all real fans. We all appreciate it, guys. And we equally love you all and will be forever thankful for you love and support! We love you so much!

But you know, I’m a fan of the show too, and I also have my own opinion!” Audience cheers really loud!!

Jensen continues:

“You all know I had troubles with accepting the finale. I had (and have! still) troubles to accept many, many thing that seem just wrong to me.. But today let’s talk about Dean’s relationships with Cas, as we’re sitting here with a man who knows Cas better than anyone.” He raises his brows and grins at Misha. Audience is screaming! Mish smiles a bit shyly, but he’s flattered. He puts this hand on his chest and bows his head, mouthing “Thank you!”

Jensen continues:

“So yeah. I’m just going strainght to the point here.

I think Dean just couldn’t believe it. That a celestial being so pure and perfect, could feel this way about him. He didn’t even though an angel CAN actually feel these emotions. That is why he never fully showed his true feelings.

At least, that is how I’ve been playing Dean for the past years.”

The tension in the audience is almost visible. But everyone remain silent, as we all know how important this is. Mish is sitting quiet as well. Probably he knows what Jensen is about to say, but he hervous anyway, because he know what it takes and what it actually means for Jensen to share something so special with us, to finally be open and speak his mind.

“Yeah, like he loves Cas with all his heart.”

Tension breaks into silent crying.

“That is why Cas’s confession breaks so many walls inside his head on so many levels. I don’t think I should explain it, I think you know.”

Misha looks at Jensen, he appreciates this so much.

“This was one of the reasons I didn’t like Deans ending. Castiel’s death was one of the most meaningful things to happen on the show. I would say, this was second biggest sacrifice, after Sam’s in Swan song.

And yet they killed Dean off as well.

Well, okay, at least give him the happiness he deserves.

Well, thank you Jack for getting Cas out of the Empty.

Well, thank you Cas, for rebuilding Dean’s heaven.

But could you please show up, YOU ASS? I don’t know...just to greet the man you love? In heaven? Don’t you think that the main thing missing in this heaven (until Sam is here as well, obviously) is YOU?”

He turns to Misha with “what the actual fuck??” face, and Misha is laughting. Audience laughing and cheering as well.

As everyone calmed down a little, Jensen continues seriously:

“Personally I think that if Cas showed up in front of Dean in heaven, this would happen..”

It’s happening fast. He puts down his mic, turns to Misha and without any hesitations grabs him by his collar and kisses him.

Frantically, passionately, and a little bit painfully, like he was longing for this for ages.

Misha is pretty much shocked! But in a second he plays it out into Castiels reaction. He stands there breathless, numb, just letting Jensen kiss his. Slowly expression on his face changes from confused and shoked to thankfull, we can see he is looking at Jensen/Dean with tears in his eyes. He gently puts his hand on Jensen’s one, that is grabbing his collar. This is the moment Jensen slows down, he gives Misha one more kiss and stops.

He opens his eyes, and they stare at each other like they never had before. Like it’s real. Like it’s finally real and they do believe it has happened.

Misha puts a mic next to his mouth. He hesitates for few seconds, just to let everyone feel this moment, although everyone know what he’s about to say. Audience is absolutely silent. Absolutely.

“Hello, Dean”

They smile at each other with tears in their eyes. Jensen puts his hands on Misha’s face. And Misha kisses him back. Softly, tenderly, longingly.

Everyone cheering, and crying, and screaming, and crying even more... and loosing it.

Jensen and Misha hold each other in their arms and leaning their foreheads together, with tears on their cheeks. They stay like this for a few seconds, so everyone could feel this moment and remember it forever.

Second later they break the characters. They look at each other with a wide, thankful smiles, and wipe their tears. Jensen hugs Misha and Mish hugs him back and even lifts him up a little. They say something to each other, no one can hear but everyone know they thank each other that they finally did it. The greatest performance and the most genuine thing they could bring to their fans.

Then they face the audience and IT’S SO LOUD IT’S SO FUCKING LOUD BECAUSE EVERYONE IS JUST LOSING THEIR SHIT!!!!!!

They hold hands on each other shoulders, smile so wide and happy. They bow, and the audience cheering even louder!

Jensen turns to the backstage, and we see him mouthing “How do you like it?)” to...to Danneel, who was standing there this whole time. She’s crying. She sends kisses to both Jensen and Misha, and smiles. “This was so beautiful” she says, and applauses them with the rest of the audience.

Insane cheering continues and continues. Misha and Jensen both look so very happy and grateful. They hold hands now, putting them high in the air so everyone can see. This is huge. Hell yesss!!!

“It is our heart canon” - Jensen says.

“See, we didn’t even had to film it with socks in my basement!”

The end.

[laora-inn]

Supernatural - Destiel and Crowley, seasons 6-12

Hi, guys. 

I’ve re-watched some episodes from Supernatural season 6 and that made me think about Destiel and Crowley - from season 6 to season 12 strictly.  

I love Crowley and think he is one of the main characters which helped Destiel to become closest to canon, though in a hard way. 

Destiel positive, one-sided Crowley/Cas, Crowley/Dean and Balthazar/Cas in subtext mentioned, don’t like - don’t read.

In the season 6, Cas’s working with Crowley was the reason of Dean and Cas’s fight, that literally almost ruined the world. From that point, Cas and Crowley have their own dynamics which Dean is far well acquainted with, though for us viewers it could be not so easy to follow.

Basically, Crowley stayed in the plot in season 6 just for these dynamics and Dean’s further frustration = jealousy. ‘Cause, if we’ll take a look at season 6, all the thing about Cas’s dealing with Crowley wasn’t so bad. Cas really had good purposes, Dean really could talk to him in a supportive way, and I strongly believe that in this case there will be NO Leviathans at all. As well as Cas’s “death”, they were a metaphorical result of Dean’s jealousy and bitter words, which also almost cost Sam his life.

Season 6 is a very interesting piece. For the first time, it’s not Sam who is the main character of the show. It’s more Dean’s story, and Cas is also “Dean’s“. He came mostly when Dean calls, they share “more profound“ bond.

Cas raises Sam from perdition, as he raised Dean, heals Sam, as he healed Dean, answers Sam’s prayers, when Dean doesn’t want to pray first, and is referred to as Sam’s “boyfriend” in 6x11 by Balthazar. But all these prompts to make Sam and Dean’s relationships with Cas equal fail.

Cas saves Sam from Hell FOR DEAN (and yet he can’t save THE WHOLE Sam, it’s Dean who manages to bring Sam’s soul back + Sam restores his memory himself, in time), heals Sam when Dean tells him to do it and THE OTHER WAY, just by touching his forehead, not by cupping his face intimately, as it was with Dean in 5x22. In 6x03 soulless Sam mentions that Cas doesn’t answer his prayers, then Dean prays to Cas, and Cas comes immediately, with the line about his and Dean’s more profound bond on his lips. In 6x10 soulless Sam tricks Cas with his prayer and even threats to kill him if Cas won’t help. In 6x12 Sam, not soulless anymore, tricks Cas with his prayer to know about his past and doesn’t want to hug him.

It’s all outlined. Why?

As for Balthazar’s referring in 6x11: he, of course, could have spoken about both Sam and Dean back there. “You” in “go ask your boyfriend” can be plural, but I rather suppose Balthazar meant Cas as Sam’s boyfriend specifically, and that’s as right as the fact that his words in 6x17, about “the other angel in a dirty trench coat who’s in love with you”, were specifically about Dean. And I’m sure, that in 6x17 Balthazar understands Cas’s intentions better - it’s the same episode where he saves Titanic because Cas told so. I suggest Cas and Balthazar’s reunion took place right before 6x15, ‘cause by the end of 6x15 we know that they are a new-formed team and all this episode has one purpose - to help Cas get the Heaven weapon from Balthazar. Misha’s cameo from 6x15 even tells some things about Balthazar while acting Cas - that Balthazar isn’t a hero and couldn’t beat Rafael, who isn’t definitely going to forgive him.

So, Balthazar’s words about Cas who is in love with Dean are more significant than his assumption about Cas as Sam’s boyfriend. We have enough evidences for the fact that Cas in this season is “Dean’s”, though he cares about Sam a lot.

First of all - ‘cause Sam is crucial for Dean.

No wonder that in 6x22 Cas knocks Sam down to crush Dean. He knows how it works.

So in this season Sam is a victim of Dean and Cas’s love quarrel, someone who is fostered by both of them. And this is the part of a plot structure, as well as Cas and Crowley’s and Cas and Balthazar’s little moments, which are not crucial for the whole Winchesters’ story, but are absolutely necessary to understand Cas in this season and his and Dean’s “hidden” plot.

‘Cause this “hidden” plot is the thing on which the main plot is grounded.

Balthazar and Cas had relationship before Dean was even born. Crowley and Cas had their relationship after Dean decided to have a peaceful life with Lisa and Ben, and this relationship matters from season 6 till the end of season 12. I think it’s basically the reason why Crowley helps Winchesters so much.

You see, for starters, Sam and Dean were just no one to Crowley. They were humans, not even his equals. But Cas - he was higher. As Dean in 5x22, in 6x20 Crowley sees a new “God” in Cas, the Heaven ruler. And he isn’t telling the whole truth about it for sure, but also he isn’t lying. I think in some way he respects Cas, even admires. And it’s not subtle in the plot logic, it’s the part of it.

Let’s check.

Season 6 - Cas and Crowley are working together all the way, Crowley doesn’t want Winchesters to intervene, he tries to kill them and is threatened by Cas. He said that Cas doesn’t know what he is. He is tricked by Cas twice, double-crossed, but not killed - opposite to Raphael. God!Cas needs Crowley.

Season 7 - In 7x01 God!Cas finds Crowley, but, again, doesn’t kill him. He makes authoritarian demands, which have weird subtext (“you take whatever I give you”) and really scare Crowley. He help the Winchesters to enslave Death, but has never did or even said something against God!Cas. In 7x23 Crowley reveals Cas is alive, but, unlike the angels, he isn’t mad. He wants explanations, receives some honey from Cas instead and says in philosophical manner: “karma is a bitch”. Later, he doesn’t try to kill Cas and even leaves Meg with the boys not to disappoint his “business partner”.  

Season 8 - Crowley is a Big Bad this season. Also, this season is the first time than Destiel becomes a real thing textually, for both Dean and Cas. And Crowley is a BIG BAD in the middle of that finally hopeful love story. Coincidence? Hell no! Also, the first question that Crowley asks when he sees Dean alive is “Where is your angel?”. 

In 8x02 Dean tries to kill Crowley who is possessing Kevin’s mum. Why? The same reason Kevin has: Crowley made him fight for his life for year and killed his girlfriend. That’s also relevant for Dean: Crowley is one of the main reasons why Dean must fight for his life for year in Purgatory and lost Cas there.

In 8x07 during their encounter Crowley doesn’t try to attack Cas. He also says, that Cas could call him when he was out the Purgatory. But Cas doesn’t want to make things right with Crowley, he tries to kill him and manages to have Kevin and the half of the demons’ tablet back. Without Cas it will be impossible: the text shows us that Cas doesn’t like Crowley. Not even a little, not anymore.  

In 8x17 Crowley understands that Cas tricked Naomi and is kinda fond of that. Also, he kills Meg here, whom he was torturing for a year and who definitely was Cas’s crash in 7x21-7x23. We also saw that Crowley knew about it - and about the fact that in 8x17 all Meg did was helping Cas and protecting him from Crowley, even if this would cost her her life.

Strange, but this will be also Crowley’s future.  

In 8x21 Crowley rescues Cas from Naomi. He also gets the angels’ tablet FROM THE CAS’S BODY, but lets Cas escape by leaving another angel with him and angel-killing bullet IN HIM.

Season 9 - in 9x10 Crowley is flirting with Cas as much as possible. Just re-watch it and pay attention to all of these “What are you, a pimp?”, “Oh, Cas, such a flirt”, “Hey. Watch the leg”, “I'll be listening to every word you say. - Promise?”, “Without the tie, he's barely recognizable” and “The three amigos ride again”. For some reason, it was more urgent for Crowley to talk about Cas’s being a human first and about Hell later. There was also deleted scene in 9x10, where Cas and Crowley waited for Dean in the motel. They were sitting on the same bed, Crowley called Cas “sunshine” and tried to talk with him about being human, then Dean showed up, and he was very concerned about how they are doing. Destiel shippers consider this scene as an approving one, and I’m totally agree, ‘cause it shows us that Dean is still jealous when it comes to Cas’s relationship with Crowley, and he actually HAS A POINT HERE - if we’ll look at Crowley. ‘Cause Crowley wasn’t interested in Dean back then, he was interested in Cas, who, in his own turn, was absolutely uninterested. He was against releasing Crowley from the start.  

It’s 9x11 where Dean and Crowley begin to develop their own relationship, and I suppose it’s grounded on the mirroring each other. Back in season 8, it’s no wonder why Crowley wanted “to play Dean” for Kevin. He felt something common with Dean, and part of this “common” was Cas.

In 9x11 Crowley says that he tried to hate Dean more than Dean himself but failed. Here he puts Dean in danger by leading him to Cain, who gives Dean his Mark. After that Dean’s way down begins. But this is also true for Crowley! He becomes human blood junkie and in 9x16 needs help. Also, he helps Dean in the end of the season, brings him back - something that Cas and Sam couldn’t do.

Season 10 - here in 10x02 Crowley and Dean’s (b)romance ends, and Crowley helps Dean to return to his normal life... by saving Cas with stealing angel’s grace for him in 10x03. I simply don’t understand WHY Crowley helped Cas here if we’ll ignore their relationship and Destiel. Crowley didn’t know Sam can’t help Dean himself and needs help for surviving. And how the hell did Crowley know that Cas can save Dean, that it will work? Why was he so sure? His words “you owe me” to Cas mean nothing, he’ll never remember them. They sound just like an excuse!

I think here Crowley: 1) wants to save Cas because of their relationship; 2) knows that Cas could “fix the problem” with Dean because of Dean and Cas’s relationship; 3) has sentimental feelings for Dean despite of their break-up one episode earlier.

Crowley couldn’t control Dean. But he thinks Cas can. And he is no wrong!

In this episode Cas says to healed Dean that Crowley stole some grace for him and this is the story for the other time ‘cause he has a female waiting for him in his car. Dean is very unhappy to hear that, and not because of “female” alone, but also because of Crowley. Crowley and some woman are the reason of Cas’s leaving again. As usual.

In 10x14 there was also one deleted scene with Cas and Crowley, where Crowley called Dean Cas’s boyfriend. Cas reacted with: “Maybe, he is your boyfriend?” and Crowley responded: “He is not my type”.

True - ‘cause here Dean gives the First Blade to Cas, not Crowley, and says that he tricked Crowley about Cain’s going to kill him. But they don’t kill Crowley. It’s just Crowley being rejected by both of them.

Still, in 10x23, after Destiel fight, Cas summons Crowley and asks him for help. And Crowley helps! His only demand to Cas is TO BEG for help. To say “King” and “please”. Well, kinky.

Also, Crowley proposes Cas to call him. Not to summon. And by the end of this episode Cas is cursed by Rowena and almost manages to kill Crowley.

Season 11 - it begins with Cas’s acknowledging that he didn’t kill Crowley (and that’s good, Crowley was a big help to save Dean from the Mark). Also, Crowley here has an orgy in some woman’s body. It was more urgent to him than anything else. Hmm.  

Some episodes later Crowley tries to be a foster parent for Amara. He is ready to kill Dean to protect her and fails. Amara becomes free, she wants to see God, the Winchesters want to stop her and call Crowley to see Lucifer. He guides them to Hell, where Cas becomes possessed by Lucifer. After saying good-bye to Sam and Dean Lucifer in Cas’s body returns to Hell, and Crowley isn’t hostile to him. He’s just surprised. 

Then comes a long BDSM story for Lucifer in Cas’s body and Crowley, and Lucifer do all the things God!Cas might do to Crowley but didn’t. When Crowley is free, he is desperate to expel Lucifer from Cas and return him to the Cage. That’s his plan, not Sam’s or Dean’s. Dean wants to expel Lucifer from Cas and give him a new vessel to fight Amara. Sam even didn’t see a point here - Cas and Cas’s vessel are two different things for him. 

Dean fails to expel Lucifer. So does Crowley - he tries in his own way, by possessing Cas’s vessel, like it was with Sam in 9x10. He says to Cas that Dean wants him to expel Lucifer, but Cas is depressed, so it doesn’t work. Also, Sam didn’t know, that he was possessed, and saw the point in fighting back, but Cas doesn’t see. So both Dean and Crowley fail. 

Season 12 - here Cas and Crowley start to look for Lucifer together and this is a horrible piece of news to Dean. Cas left him in 12x03 to work with Crowley again! Cas and Crowley are playing FBI agents together - it was Dean’s only role-play with Cas from 5x03! 

Cas isn’t happy either, but Crowley is. And that’s just amazing, ‘cause without Crowley Cas could be dead in 12x07. Lucifer just saw Crowley and wanted to punch him instead of Cas. No wonder that Dean thanked Crowley for helping Cas here. In 12x08 Crowley helps with Lucifer again. In 12x09 he is uninterested in looking for the Winchester boys, though in 12x12 he helps again - and not just with Ramiel. He rescues Cas from dying. Dean thanks him for that for the second time in 12x15.

In 12x21 Crowley knows about Cas’s bailing off with Kelly. He tells Lucifer about it and calls Cas “Winchesters’ love slave”. He thinks that Cas wants to kill Kelly’s baby. Then Lucifer gets free, and Crowley sacrifices himself to stop him. To save the world, the Winchesters... and Cas - for the third time. 

So Cas was important for Crowley from season 6. He is one of the main reasons Crowley acknowledged Winchesters at all, saw something in them. 

And Crowley, in his own turn, is one of the main characters to expose nature of Destiel. He was always somewhere in the middle of their relationship, mostly as Dean’s mirror. 

Well, from season 13 the nature of Destiel changed. 

[ourloveisforthelovely]

To the Ends of the Earth 17

A/n: Supernatural AU. OOC Gabriel

Link to Chapter 16

Pairings: Gabriel x Reader

_______

Gabriel did not let go of you for a good five minutes. You were not about to argue about it either. This had been the first bit of physical affection that the two of you had shared is some time.

After a few moments longer, Gabriel finally let go of you. He glanced over his shoulder at Amelia, who was not even looking up. The kid was too busy building her mud pies or whatever she was doing. Gabriel smirked. The kid reminded him too much of you as a child. Sometimes it was like looking in a gigantic mirror!

“Hey kid, why don’t you go inside and clean up?”

Gabriel said with a smile. Amelia nodded before standing up and dusting off her dirty pants.

“Okay, I am really dirty anyway. My daddy is going to have a cow.”

Gabriel partly wished that he could see Sam’s face when the kid walked in with mud and dirt all over her.

The amused feeling vanished as Gabriel remembered what he had to talk to you about. This wasn’t going to be a good conversation in the slightest.

“Y/n, I need to talk to you about something.”

Your happy smile quickly vanished and was replaced by that serious expression that Gabriel wished that he never had to see. He liked making you smile. This look was the furthest thing from a smile imaginable.

“Gabriel, I don’t like conversations that start like this.”

You said. It was the truth too. It seemed like every time Gabriel talked to you with this particular tone something was going straight to hell in a giant dumpster fire.

Gabriel looked at you sympathetically.

“Sugar, I was talking with Dean. We both had thought that it would be a good idea for me to keep an eye on Raphael. It seems like he is taking up making some friends around here. When I say friends, I mean other angels that have been on earth for a long time. I’m going to be gone for a few weeks...I don’t want….”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

You snapped. Gabriel sighed. He didn’t say anything for a moment. In fact, you didn’t give him a chance to get a word out. Gabriel only looked at you with that annoyed expression that he seemed to be wearing a lot more lately.

“Where was I in this conversation? Why am I never considered? I’m supposed to be your wife and I am always left out in the cold on these decisions! It's like you are just fine talking to my brothers and Cas more than me. Would you just prefer it if you kept me locked at home all barefoot and pregnant or something? I’m not some 1950’s housewife that is just going to sit around and wait for you to come home! This is insane Gabriel! Every time you go anywhere near your psycho brothers you come back not in the condition that you left in! You are just getting your grace back to 100% and now you are going back after them...this is insane!”

Gabriel gave you an innocent shrug.

“First off, barefoot and pregnant? Who the hell says that? Second, gross. You know I want nothing to do with children. Amelia is fine. She isn’t ours! We can play with her then send her back to Sam when we get sick of her. Third, I don't want you to be a stereotypical housewife. I like you the way you are. It's what I love the most about you...even though you can be difficult. Now that my grace is back, it would be the best time. Nothing is going to happen this time, Y/n.”

You shook your head wanting to sit down and hold your head in your hands.

“Then let me go with you. You know that I can hold my own in a fight.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Not happening. I won’t be able to keep my thoughts where they will need to be. I will be worrying about you the whole time. That is how people get killed.”

You muttered something about being a big girl and not needing to be watched over all the time.

“Yes, you do and you are not going. That’s my final word.”

Gabriel said, taking on his “archangel” tone. You looked at him coldly before turning and storming back toward the bunker’s entrance. In a few hours, you would regret not kissing him goodbye or saying “I love you” at the moment, however, you wanted to kick the archangel in the shins.

“I think that I am going to form my own country and declare war on you and Dean!”

“Y/n…”

Gabriel started but stopped when you held your hand up.

“You aren’t going to listen to me anyway. I am just wasting my breath. Be ready to get a declaration of war notice...hope you and your new best friend forever Dean are up to it.”

You stormed into the bunker without another word.

Storming into the kitchen, you froze seeing Amelia looking at a gooey pancake that Sam put in front of her.

“Daddy this is gross.”

Sam looked up with a sigh and immediately knew what was wrong.

“Hold that thought, sweetheart.”

Sam said, petting Amelia’s head and turning to face you.

“I see Gabriel talked to you.”

Your eyes flickered in your older brother’s direction. Sam’s face was wary as he gave you a sympathetic expression.

“I see you knew about it too. I’m declaring war on you also.”

You snapped. Sam frowned.

“I said that he was wrong to handle this the way that he is.”

You stopped dead in your tracks and was silent for a moment. Sam was on your side. Good old Sam! You could help but be thankful for him at the moment. It was always Sam that stuck up for you when Dean treated you like a kid. Sam wanted to make sure that you had equal say in whatever the situation was.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

You said softly. Sam shook his head.

“You don’t have to apologize. I know that you get sick of being treated like a little kid.”

You nodded, coldly. That was an understatement! You were beyond sick of being treated like a child. This was the perfect opportunity to throw your feelings up in Gabriel’s face. He hated when his older brothers treated him like that kid in the family now here he was doing the same thing to you!

“I really do. Sam, do you think that I am a capable hunter?”

Sam nodded, looking over his shoulder making sure that Amelia was busy with her coloring and not paying attention to the conversation at hand.

“You know I do.”

You stepped forward and wrapped your arms around Sam’s waist. He didn’t wait before wrapping his arms around you.

“Y/n, I know that you can handle almost anything that comes your way. I also know that Gabriel and Dean are trying in some annoying way to protect you too. It doesn’t mean that you should be sidelined to the kids table though.”

“All Gabriel and Dean want me to do is sit around here and play den mother. Normally I don’t mind but today I am extra pissy!”

Sam chuckled.

“Want me to take you out for ice cream?”

You stubbornly nodded. Sam smiled before turning back to Amelia who was looking up at ice cream.

“I wanna come.”

She said with a pouty expression that mirrored her father’s. You smiled at your niece before motioning her forward.

“Well, come on, sweetheart.”

Half an hour later, you sat nibbling on what was left of your ice cream cone. Amelia was halfway through a very messy hot fudge cake. You smirked as Sam sat the napkin that he was holding down in clear defeat of keeping Amelia’s white shirt clean.

“She eats like Dean.”

You said with a smile. Sam shook his head with a loud sigh.

“She is a lot like her world's okayest uncle.”

Glancing around the restaurant, you couldn’t help but notice several sets of eyes starring in your direction. You tried to keep the obviousness of the situation under control as you gazed at the multiple being looking in your direction.

“Angles.”

You muttered. Sam looked up.

“What?”

You looked around the room again discreetly before focusing your attention on your older brother.

“There are a shit ton of angels here. 1 guess as to who they are after.”

Sam didn’t even have to respond. He knew. It was you. Michael and Raphael had made it clear to any angel that you were hit number 1.

“Do you have your angel blade?”

Sam whispered. You nodded, not even having to feel for the weapon at your side. Glancing down to Amelia, you muttered fuck. This was going to be a hell of a way from your niece to figure out that angels were real and weren’t always the good guys.

“Make sure that she doesn’t peek.”

Sam nodded before leaning down and whispering something into his daughter’s ear. His eyes rolled back to yours.

“I’ve got your back.”

You nodded before stepping out of the booth. Pretending to be unaware of the danger at hand, you walked to the restaurant door. You stopped and looked out into the pleasant Kansas sunny afternoon. After taking a few deep breaths, you returned to the counter where the owner stood counting money.

“Can I get you something?”

He asked, casually. You nodded.

“A glass of water, please.”

As he went to the soda machine to fill up the cup in hand you slowly felt for the revolver in the back of your jeans.Angel killing bullets...check

“So do you have insurance on this place?”

You asked. The owner shook his head.

“Nah, nothing ever happens here.”

“Too bad.”

You muttered before taking a sip of your water. After a few more moments of silence, you turned to the angels casually sitting about the place.

“Hello, you bunch of holy fuckers. I am Y/n Winchester and I am here to deport you right back to heaven where you belong.”

As soon as the words left your lips, an angel had a hold of your hand. It took you all of two seconds to sink the angel blade into the chest of the being. After the angel was dead you turned to face a few others that were stepping closer to you.

“Oh look, you brought your friends.”

You muttered as Sam took out a few angels to your left. You reached behind you taking out your revolver and blasting the angel killing bullets into the others.

“Sam, remind me to thank Dean for his hard work on these bullets.”

Before Sam could respond, a voice you knew well began to speak

.“Yes, let's thank Dean.”

Your eyes widened as Raphael stepped out from the booth that you couldn’t see. Christ…

‘Hello, Y/n. I see you don’t have my brother watching your every move?”

You swallowed as Raphael gave you that cold brutal smile that could scare anyone to death.

“I don’t need Gabriel to watch my every move, dickbag. I have my big girl panties on. You and Michael need to get some new hobbies. I swear you two are like our little annoying fan brats that just won’t go away. I hear that scrap booking is nice.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow.

“Is that supposed to be funny? Do you think that you are funny or something?”

You grinned.

“In the words of my dear brother, I think that I am adorable.”

Raphael’s unnamed expression deepened.

“You are about to be dead. It won’t be a bad thing. I will just have to watch Gabriel be in agony for the rest of eternity but I think that I can manage that.”

You glanced at Sam out of the corner of your eye, he was watching Raphael's every move and was ready to pounce on the archangel.

“I’ve got it, Sam.”

You said softly before looking back to Raphael.

“You first.”

Before Raphael could get his hand up, you fired the gun, hitting him square in the chest. Raphael blinked stupidly as the pain began to take over.

“Bet you never expected this did you, you stupid son of a bitch? Archangel killing bullets. You thought I was just playing? Bitch I never play! Now you're dead and Michael will be next.”

You looked away as Raphael died. Part of you wanted to watch. The other part didn’t. You knew that this would be what it would be like if Gabriel died and your mind didn’t want to process it. You also didn’t want to process the thought that you would have to tell Gabriel that you had killed his brother. At odds or not, Raphael was still Gabriel’s brother and this would probably be a rough thing.

Sam’s hand touching the small of your back made you jump. You turned to face your brother, who cradled his clearly stunned daughter in his arms.

“What did aunty do?”

She whispered, looking around. Sam sighed. He had all of the intentions of letting his daughter grow up in ignorance of the ways of their “world.” Amelia could be the one that went into the world without fooling with the supernatural but who was Sam kidding? This would be her life just like it was his and yours.

“She saved all of us.”

______

@brokencasbutt67-writer

@shaylybaby2032

@authoressskr

@fandom-trash-worth-it

@summer-novak

@hankypranky

@sprnaturallover

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@emiwrites3reads

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 @knight-of-gleefulness

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[beanie-beebo-writes]

Highway To Hell

Series Summary: An all-too-real nightmare and a missing brother sends Dean, Bobby, and Cas on a frantic search. All the while, what may be a bad dream leads to a probable jump-start to Dean's true worst nightmare, Sam jump-starting the end of the world. Set in season 4; consider this a parallel canonverse fic

Previous chapter, Masterlist

Chapter 14

Disclaimer: Please note that I am not racist in any way, as I believe in equality for all. I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by anything that is written. Feedback is always appreciated, so please let me know if it unnecessary for the story.

Once the foggy mixture settles, they see that the scenery around them has changed. They are no longer at the small park, instead they face a long, bare corridor. It is painted with bright hues of white, light grey, and lights from an unknown source. The lights somehow make the pale colors increasingly brighter, but tolerable. Lining the hallway is a multitude of doors, each one inscribed with at least one name and two dates.

"So.. this is heaven?" Dean asks.

"Yes." Gadreel says, hurrying the hunters along wordlessly. "We need to hurry, we probably don't have much time before-"

Suddenly an angel appears straight in their path, then another, and another.

"Going somewhere brother?" The angel in front asks, assuming battle stance.

"Please, we do not ask for trouble." Gadreel concedes, raising his hands defensively.

"I assume you do, bringing these filthy humans here." The angel says.

"Wow, rude." Dean says.

"Who are you? I do not recognize you." The angel says, dismissing Dean's comment.

"Never mind that right now, there seem to be more pressing things at stake." Gadreel says.

"The only thing here that is pressing, is you." The angel says.

"I beg to differ." Bobby adds.

"No one asked you, mortal. Silence." One of the other angels says.

Bobby deadpans but remains quiet for the sake of moving past the angel barricade.

"Where is our Father? I must see him immediately." Gadreel says.

"Haven't you been paying attention? He is long gone. He doesn't care for us anymore." The angel in front says.

"That is not true, he never left." Gadreel says.

"Not to crash your little parade, but he has. But not to worry, because someone else has stepped in." The angel says.

"Well that explains everything." Dean mutters.

"That may be so, but there's still something wrong. I need to see our Father, now." Gadreel says.

"Something wrong? Brother, everything is right! The savior who has stepped in, promises to fulfill all the things our Father never did." One of the other angels says.

"I wouldn't be too sure." Dean says.

"What would you know? You impotent little gnat." The other angel says.

"We cracked open your buddy's brain here, and know some things you may not know. If you don't believe me, by all means, crack it open yourself. Of course, if you can. We're not here to destroy your sanctuary or whatever." Dean says.

"As if." Another angel says.

"You don't need Him, we don't need Him. We can show you something better. Come, my brother, abandon these apes and join us." The other angel says, extending a hand.

"Only if you allow them-" Gadreel gestures to Dean and Bobby "-to come with me. I can assure you, that they mean no harm unless if provoked to do so." He says.

"As it is, humans are not permitted on the premises unless if they have moved onto their personal heavens." The angel says.

"He might be asking, but we aren't." Dean says, sliding out his angel blade.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" A voice says from around the corner.

A short, stocky man emerges from an adjacent hallway, empty handed and unreadable. Despite his thinning hair, his head appears full, like a cheap, stale knockoff of Will Ferrell. Unlike the angels, he wears a soft brown cardigan on top of a pale blue dress shirt. As he enters the scene unfolding, all eyes are drawn to his existence.

"Sir, I am so sorry we have disturbed you." The angel in front apologizes frantically. "We didn't mean to distract you from your work, we were just escorting everyone to their proper places."

"Nonsense, there will be no need. These two hunters will be a perfect addition to my plans, they may enter." The man says as he places a hand on the angel's shoulder. "As for Gadreel over there.."

With a flick of his hand, Gadreel completely disappears into thin air. The room stills momentarily with tension. Dean grips tightly onto the hilt of his blade, preparing for a fight.

"You two can follow me, the rest of you, disperse to your previous positions. I can take it from here." The man says.

Gadreel holds his aching head as he forces himself off of the Earth. The world spins viciously around him as he tries to gather the scene in front of him. The friendly demon from before had been thrown onto the ground as if she were the filth she was supposed to be. Gadreel had begun to grow an affinity for her; a shame she had to waste away. Just like he likely would be about to.

He stiffens at the sound of his siblings approaching behind him.

"We have been waiting for you, brother."

The man leads Dean and Bobby into a dark, empty, brick-walled room. He stands in front of one of the walls while the two hunters stand rigidly a few feet away from him.

"Dean Winchester. The least likely person I'd expect to come charging in here. Without his lumbering sidekick as well." The man says.

"Let's cut the monologue crap, okay? We're not here for small talk." Dean says.

The man sighs exasperatedly "You never were the sharing and caring type."

"Where is God?" Dean asks.

"That is a good question. One I have been wondering for many years." The man says.

"I'm not here to play your games." Dean says.

"And I'm not playing any." The man says. "If I wanted to play games, you would be running around like headless chickens right about now."

"You don't think that's what we've been doing this whole time?" Bobby asks, his voice rising with anger.

"I mean, I haven't been watching you, so I really don't know nor care. Do you really think I'm stepping up God's plans for you?" The man says with a chuckle.

"And what is 'stepping up' supposed to mean?" Dean asks.

"I was just about to explain. Sit." The man says.

As if they have a choice, Dean and Bobby are suddenly frozen into place by an invisible force once again.

"And I also want these traitors to be reminded of what their 'precious beings' have done to our Father's wondrous creation." The man says, slightly louder.

Metal bars ascend from the floor as if it were a liquid, until a row of cells fills an empty wall. Inside each are dozens of angels, most of them familiar from months before. In the dead center, Castiel. Dean and Bobby instantly lock eyes with him.

"And what about all of the terrible things we have done to our Father's creations?" Castiel asks.

"Ours had purposes, righteous purposes." The man says.

"You call this righteous?" Hannah asks.

"When you will see the final result, maybe you'll change your mind. Well, you probably won't see it anyway." The man says.

The man turns back to face Dean and Bobby, ignoring the angels glaring at his backside. With the wave of his hand, the scenery around them changes to a leafy landscape. A nude couple wanders aimlessly through the shrubbery until multiple disembodied whispers stop them in their tracks.

"Eat the forbidden fruit."

Snakes slither out from behind a tree in front of them, and swarm the couple, who seem unalarmed. The woman glances at her significant other before picking a gleaming apple from the tree. She takes a large bite to satisfy her famished mind; she soaks it in wordlessly. Her significant other gently takes the apple from her grasp and takes a bite without hesitation.

"Adam and Eve?" Bobby asks.

"The first original sin." The man in the cardigan states.

"You've got to be kidding me." Dean deadpans.

"You were doomed and flawed from the start. You gave into temptation, even though you were specifically ordered not to do so." The man says.

"But you know what's different?" Castiel asks, standing up from his cell bench. "Humans are brave enough to question and venture. You, and your followers, are bound; sheep."

"No, Castiel. If humans were smart enough, they would realize that orders are meant to be followed for a reason." The man says.

"They are a growing species, they learn from evolution. That's the power of free will, which is what our Father wanted for them. You and your kind don't learn, as we always go through the same battles and consequences. You are stagnant." Inias says.

"Unlike the others, Inias, I have learned. This time, for a fact, I know exactly what needs to be done and how my plans will not be foiled." The man says with a cheeky grin.

"Yeah, we'll see about that." Bobby says.

"I'm not wishing you any luck to try and stop me, it's not like you'll need it anyway. Anyway, back to your worst hits tour." The man says.

The scene around them warps to a dry cotton field, filled with laboring slaves. Their heavy clothing is dripping with sweat as they continuously pick seed after seed. Luring over them are numerous white men dressed in higher class dress shirts and overalls. Each of them hold a long whip.

"The American civil war. The war that literally tore a country in half. Mind you, this is one of many throughout the globe. You turned on your own species, segregated yourselves because you were 'different'. Seeing the scene itself, do I need to mention more?" The stocky man says, gesturing behind him.

The crack of a whip hitting flesh quickly grabs Bobby and Dean's attention. One of the slaves is bent over in excruciating pain as an overseer stands over him expectantly.

"Don't make me say it again, you piece of garbage. No breaks. Get your ass moving!" The overseer says.

The scene switches to a dimly lit underground coal mine. In the small confined area are groups of working miners, covered in coal and dirt fragments. Moving beams of light project from each of their hard hats as they work.

"Global Warming and the destruction of our Father's creations, plural." The man says.

The scene shifts again, this time to the gates before Auschwitz I.

"More death and segregation of your own kind."

They transport to a bloodied battlefield across a desecrated Iraqi city.

"War, more death, segregation."

The man snaps his fingers and they are all instantly back in the dark brick room they had started in. The room is silent with no change in attitude.

"Must I say more?" He says, clasping his hands together.

"Oh please, go on." Dean says sarcastically.

The man chuckles. "You know, I kind of like you. It's a shame you don't see what we see."

"Oh I see it, I see all of it. I see all of the crap our species has done and still does, but it doesn't mean you're any better than us." Dean says.

"Oh, I believe it does. We are God's chosen." The man says.

"The way you locked up your own kind over here? It's the same thing we did and still do. So you're wrong, sorry to tell you." Bobby says.

"I see what you're getting at, but you're actually wrong. God's chosen cannot be flawed, they must be ideal. These runts are, what they are." The man says. "I'm not really sure why I'm arguing with you, it's pointless. Although at least you have some more hindsight."

The man silently disappears momentarily and returns with an unconscious Sam in his stubby arms. He grunts and tosses his limp body to the floor.

"What the hell?!" Bobby exclaims, trying with all of his might to move his frozen body.

"Don't you dare, make another move on him you son of a bitch." Dean growls.

"Oh, don't worry, he doesn't feel a thing anyway. He won't and neither will you once I'm done."

"If you so lay a hand on them, I will make sure you will never walk again." Castiel says, gripping his cell bars tightly.

"A threat you will never deliver, because it will be the same for you and your pack." The man says.

"Like we won't put up a fight?" Another angel says.

"You won't even have the chance." The man says. "Now to initiate phase two."

He closes his eyes and concentrates for a brief moment before expectantly opening them again. He furrows his brows at his audience in front of him.

"Oh, that's right. You terrestrial monkeys can't hear a thing that's going on. Let me amp up the volume." The man says.

Suddenly the room is filled with a mixture of sounds signifying agonizing pain, causing Dean and Bobby to feel sick to their stomachs. They look up to the angels to see their faces had been painted in horror and shock. Several embrace one another while others frantically try to find a way out of the containment cells.

"Our Father had a plan, you monster!" Hannah says, human tears filling to the brim.

"As if. If he did, the world wouldn't be the way it was." The man says, turning to the three hunters, who had just crumpled to the floor in excruciating pain. "What you and your entire species is feeling right now, is all of the effects you did to the Earth, just sped up a bit. I also added a little extra special something for you three, since you only make the planet ten times worse, just by existing."

Dean and Bobby clutch their throats as the room boils and depletes of oxygen. As they grasp for whatever life is remaining, they turn to each other and then to Sam. Despite being completely unconscious, Sam is writhing and choking on the same air Dean and Bobby are breathing. They both uselessly try to move to Sam, but are still restrained by an invisible grip. Dean whines audibly as he struggles. The man chuckles before turning back to the caged angels.

"Who's better now?" He asks.

Suddenly the room violently shakes and becomes unbearably bright. Dean and Bobby cover their ears as a high pitched ringing slowly increases in volume. The angels and the short man widen their eyes as they stare straight into the source of the light. As everything in the room returns back to its original state, Bobby and Dean open their eyes.

"...Chuck?"

"Metatron, we need to talk."