#taking the “Cas annoying cosmic beings into doing what he wants” thing to another level

[nekoshi13]

I know we needed the Empty to have beef with Cas so one of the trio had another awful deal shoved on them and so he could die dramatically for Dean the following season but can you imagine if it went the other way around?

Like, the Empty just wants to sleep and Cas is annoying and noisy, why would it want him there? What if instead he just got fucking banned from angel afterlife?

Imagine the Empty coming for Jack in heaven and Cas tries to fight it and the Empty is just like "fuck! the annoying guy is here, pretend you didn't see me, gotta flee before he starts talking to me" and they get Jack back genuinely for free

Imagine Billie getting into that room where this time Dean and Cas have no plan more than going down fighting and she goes for Cas and after mortally wounding him she snaps him away to the Empty like she did that one time with Jack, so there's no body and she turns to Dean who is trying to grapple with his shock and grief while also wanting to kill her for this but then they hear something colliding with the shelves and Billie turns around and Cas is there again, alive and looking like he just got thrown very hard so she's like "this is impossible, how did you do it?" and Cas just blinks, bewildered at what just happened to him "it seems I am too annoying and have been banned from dying"

So Cas just keeps shielding Dean from every attack and the Empty gets increasingly annoyed until it's throwing Cas straight against Billie so she will just stop sending him and... she dies, eventually, because Cas is literally too annoying to die

[catalogercas]

Nevada

Summary: Dean processes his emotions at the speed Nevada counts it's ballots.

A03

Spring 2020

Dean can’t process.

It’s too much.

He stares at the wall.

He stares at his hands.

He flips up his phone again, stares at the now black screen, and thinks, maybe, he really should call Sam.

Sam and Jack both need to know what happened.

But he’s not even sure what did happen.

Too many things at once, that’s for damn sure.

One thing he’s certain, unrelently certain, about, is that Cas is gone. Like, gone gone.

He clenches his fists together and throws his head into his hands. He can’t take Cas being gone. Not again. He needs him. He needs him right now to get through the hell they’re all in. They need to wade through it all together. Defeat God. Call it a day.

But Cas...

Damn it, Cas. Damn it all.

He folds his head down further towards his knees and wishes there was a bottle of alcohol within his reach because, damn, does he need some.

He’s pretty sure Cas is gone because...well... because Cas was fucking... in love ...with him?

That couldn’t be right. Could it?

Why the hell would Cas go and do something dumb like be in love with him?

Honestly, what idiot would?

And that idiot being Cas...

He almost laughs, in a semi hysterical way, but Cas’ words fight with his confusion, his despair.

All he can see is Cas’ eyes welling with tears as he tells him how much he loves him. Because that was it, right? A love confession? A confession that Cas basically worships the ground he walks on because of how much he cares, how much he loves.

And that semi hysterical feeling punches him in the gut, because he doesn’t care enough, doesn’t love enough.

Because if he did, Cas would still be there. Right?

If he’d caught up with Cas faster, if he’d realized what Cas was saying ...

He could have...

He’s honestly not sure what he could have done, what difference it would have made.

How he could have stopped The Empty.

Tears steadily flow down his cheek as he lifts his fist and punches it into the floor before drawing back bloodied knuckles.

He stares at the wall again, then the ceiling, then the phone over and over in methodical order.

He wishes deals weren’t out.

He wishes he had Cas’ trenchcoat to hold on to.

He wishes he had a body to think about burning.

Something more concrete than an empty room.

He feels so empty it hurts.

He presses his hand to the bloody handprint on his jacket and whispers, “Damn it, Cas.”

XXX

Summer 2020

The Empty is as vast and dark as Castiel remembered.

He doesn’t understand, though, why he’s awake.

Why would an ancient cosmic being annoyed by his very existence allow him to be awake? A second time?

He calls out to the Empty, and it responds with his face.

“Pity that you’re awake, but, no matter. I’ve learned how to put you back to bed. So, off you go. Your son may try to bring you back, but it won’t work this time.”

Cas sighs and silently thanks Jack for trying.

XXX

Fall 2020

God is dead, finally dead.

Things are not normal, exactly, but Dean knows, at least, that God isn’t pulling his strings. Or Sam’s strings, or Jack’s strings or anyone else’s. Things are as normal as they’re going to get, considering.

They’re not good. They’re definitely not good. There’s a gaping Cas sized hole filling the bunker.

Jack’s been trying to bring him back from The Empty the same way he did the first time, using his god level angel radio, basically since God kicked it, but it’s not working. Hope that it will ever work is draining, and Dean is desperate to find another way to get Cas back, whatever it takes.

That, or to throw himself into every case he can to try to forget about the Cas sized hole that’s not just in the bunker but in his chest.

The hate and anger that Cas told him wasn’t his driving force, well, he’s pretty sure Cas was wrong.

All he wants is to break things until they feel as broken as he does.

XXX

He walks into Sam’s room in early November with a lead on a vampire den only to find that Sam and Jack, of all things, are watching news about the U.S. presidential election.

He’s never felt more removed from, possibly, anything. “You know none of us can vote, right?”

“Well, you definitely can’t. Election day was yesterday. But yeah, we’re all, well...” Sam trails off before turning back to the screen, clearly concerned about setting Dean off. It doesn’t take much these days. Even Dean knows that.

“Dead,” Dean finishes for him, bitterly. “Yeah.”

“Rooney was leading last night, but the states that haven’t reported are too close to call,” Sam says, ignoring the elephant he brought in the room. The glaring reminder that their best friend is still gone.

“Democracy is fascinating,” Jack says, seemingly oblivious, “especially this democracy, Sam’s been telling me how the electoral college works. Rooney could win without winning.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Sam says as Dean wonders why either of them care, about anything, honestly, but especially this.

“Well, as thrilling as this is, I’ve got us a case. Looks like vampires, outside Vegas.”

“Clark County is one of the counties that hasn’t reported,” Jack says.

Dean gives Jack a blank look before he clarifies, “Las Vegas is in Clark County.”

“Yeah, great, whatever. Meet me outside in ten.”

XXX

Jack waits for Dean to leave before turning to Sam. “I’m trying it again. Dean needs him back. It fixed him when I brought Cas back before. I’d never seen Dean so happy.”

Sam frowns. They’ve been over this several times already. It’s not working, and it hurts them all to keep trying. “Yeah, well, what about you, Jack? Aren’t you tired of trying? You keep getting your hopes up only to have them dashed all over again. I’m sure that’s hard on you.”

Jack folds his arms across his chest and takes a deep breath. Sam isn’t wrong, but he’s not ready to give up. Not on Cas. Not yet. “I miss him, and I want him back so I’m going to keep trying.”

But it’s not just that. He thinks he’ll probably be seeking the Winchesters’ forgiveness for the rest of time, especially Dean’s. No matter what he does to help them, he’s not sure he’ll ever feel he’s atoned for Mary’s death. No matter how many times they say he’s forgiven.

Bringing Cas back helped Dean so much before, and all he wants to do is help them. Help Dean.

“But, it’s different for me, Sam. Cas was my father, and he knew, or, I hope he knew, that I loved him.”

“He knew,” Sam says.

“But Dean...Dean doesn’t have that. Cas doesn’t know that Dean loves him. I’m not sure Dean knows he loves Cas. But he does, doesn’t he?”

Sam huffs. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve told you before, he does. He just ... Dean’s a little dense about things sometimes.”

“But he needs to tell Cas. That will fix him. I’m sure of it.”

XXX

The drive to Nevada is long. They almost run out of gas before hitting Denver, and after Denver, the cassette deck goes on the fritz.

Dean refuses to let Sam or Jack play music off their phones, so instead he’s stuck listening to an endless and needless update on the current ballot count of several swing states. Pennsylvania, then Georgia, then Nevada, then back to Pennsylvania.

He silently decides to go along with their support of Lucy Hernadez. He tries not to overthink that they’ve mentioned her pro-LGBTQ platform several times. That’s important for the gay people he knows. Charlie. Claire.

His brain traitorously adds Cas to the list, and he grips the steering wheel too hard. They almost veer off the road, and Sam yells at him to watch it.

“Something in the road,” Dean mutters.

Neither Jack nor Sam point out that there’s nothing in sight.

They’re an hour outside of Las Vegas when Sam informs Jack that Georgia flipped blue at the same time as a phone inside the glove box starts ringing.

Sam opens the glove box and throws five cells on the ground before getting to the one that’s ringing. The caller ID reads Cas and Dean’s heart stops.

He immediately pulls off to the side of the road. “Where is he, Sam?”

Sam answers the phone, puts it on speaker, and it immediately goes to dial tone.

“Where is he?”

Sam keeps trying to call back, but there’s no answer.

XXX

Hope and doubt pervades the car.

With no other direction to go, they inch closer to Las Vegas as Jack informs them, with no particular enthusiasm that Pennsylvania has also flipped blue.

Then the impossible happens.

The phone rings again, and the caller ID reads Paradise, NV

The bubble of hope collectively rises, and Sam hits the speaker button.

They wait, and they’re all rewarded with Cas’ gravelly voice crackling in the background. “Hello, Dean? I hope you still have this phone...”

“Yeah, buddy, we read you loud and clear. Are you really in Paradise?”

“Paradise? No, Dean, I was...”

“No, Cas, the city. Paradise, Nevada.”

“Oh, um, I’m not sure. This is a pay phone.”

“We’re coming to get you right now. But we got to know where you are.”

There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. He hears Cas speaking with someone else before he returns. “Yes, I’m unironically in Paradise.”

“We’re not too far. Uh, hang tight?”

XXX

Dean speeds the whole way down the length of the interstate and bangs his horn empathically as he drives through frustratingly slow traffic outside Paradise.

There are crowds of what appear to be protesters holding signs stating, “Count the Votes.”

“Isn’t that just how voting works? What the hell are these morons doing?” Dean asks. “They’re in my way.”

Sam shakes his head. “Apparently that’s not how Rooney thinks.”

“Great. That’s just great. A wannabe dictator is preventing me from getting to Cas.”

“Wait, Dean, stop!” Jack shouts from the back. “I see him!”

And Dean sees, to his utter shock, Castiel standing in the middle of the crowd holding a sign covered in rainbows stating “Lucy Hernadez for president!”

Cas sees them, lowers the sign, and waves, a thin smile lighting up his eyes.

Dean doesn’t even take the keys from the ignition as he practically rolls out of the car and runs to Cas.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t think.

He sprints across the parking lot, shoving multiple people out of his way.

He gets to Cas and wraps his arms around him and before he can even process what he’s doing, his lips are pressed into Cas’ lips. His hands are in Cas’ hair, and he can’t pull himself away.

Cas needs to know.

It wasn’t one sided.

Now that he’s had months and months to think about it, it was really never one sided.

He pulls back and sees the surprise and shock written all over Cas’ face.

“I love you, you goddamn idiot!”

“Dean,” Cas says, and tears are welling in his eyes again, just like they were so many months ago. He leans his forehead against Dean’s and Dean leans into it. “I missed you.”

“Yeah, back at you. Never ever pull that crap again. Making a deal with super angel hell? Come on, Cas. Never again.”

He feels tears running down his own cheeks as they wrap their arms around each other, and Dean’s not sure that either of them plan on letting go.

As they do, the crowd around them starts applauding and cheering, and, at first, Dean thinks it’s for them, and he thinks, maybe, they should have moved away from the protest for this, but then everyone starts cheering,“Nevada’s blue! Nevada’s blue! Nevada’s blue!”

Dean laughs and cheers, because even if it’s not his victory, Cas is, and he’s there anyway. “Well, way to go Lucy Hernadez!”

“Yes,” Cas agrees. “I was speaking to the protesters while I was waiting for you. They gave me this sign. It seems some monsters are political policies.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t hunt those ones,” Dean says.

He looks up to see Jack and Sam walking towards them slowly as both keep looking away awkwardly and then looking back. He waves them forward.

They both wrap Cas in a hug, and, as the revelry goes on around them, for the first time in a long time, they all feel whole.

[castielcommunism]

hi <3 because you have written a lot about angel stuff what do you think about the depiction of heaven facilities in Supernatural, like it should have been like backrooms, like liminal spaces

HIII sorry first of all I’m going to be an annoying pedant about the term “liminal” because it’s an important geographic term. Like from a utility standpoint liminal spaces either facilitate human movement (roads, hallways) or are holding bays while waiting for movement to occur (hospital waiting rooms, airports). Their function is their lack of meaning aside from being a space that connects you to a place of meaning. I think that’s why on an emotional level people often express feeling strange in these spaces, whether it’s via memes about encountering demons in the hallway at 2am or feeling like an unplugged refrigerator in an airport waiting area. You feel “out of place” because the space is designed to be temporary. You don’t go to a sidewalk or road to hang out with your friends, for example!

So like Heaven as a space where angels hang out doesn’t fit that definition very well. We see them using it as a meeting place to talk with another, to observe humans in heaven, to receive punishment after disobeying, and all kinds of other things. It’s a place that has meaning for them that they use for a variety of different things, and it’s also a place they defend as their “home.” I don’t like most depictions of it in the show, but that takes a while to explain beyond the obvious of “it’s kinda lame”

The interesting thing about spn is that it takes the biblical* creation myth seriously while also acknowledging modern understandings of the creation of the universe (the Big Bang is referenced, Cas says he’s on Earth “several billion years after the beginning” that kinda thing), so Supernatural’s sense of temporal and spatial scale is much more vast than the religious history it’s drawing from. As a result angels seem to be a mix of traditional depictions of angels (wings, fire, glowing eyes, swords) and modern knowledge bases (Cas knows physics and calculus, there’s multiple references to them being machines/computers, he describes his true form in reference to modern architecture, “wavelength of celestial intent”, etc).

So like in light of that, I often think of Heaven not as like a three dimensional realm angels go to when they want to gossip with each other (which is how it’s presented in the show) but again as a blend of historical religious myth and modern science. The Halo games actually do this very well - the gods in those games constructed much of the laws of the universe that every living thing operates from, including upper dimensional channels for travelling vast distances. The gods themselves exist kinda like networks that transmit information across spacetime and don’t really exist in 3 dimensional form - think of a brain with much more complex architecture that spans the universe. Like in the same way a shadow is a 2D representation of a 3D object, their 5D “star roads” (transit channels) can sometimes be glimpsed in 3D “shadows” (this is a broad over simplification and I’m pulling from a rusty memory on Halo lore, so some of this is probably inaccurate). Dimensionality is reduced until the human brain can perceive it, and human beings can’t parse data in more than 3 visual dimensions. We can do 4d as long as the forth dimension is temporal (not visual), but even that is pretty difficult. But think of all the data loss in a shadow! How much do you know about an object if you just look at its shadow?

And like given how bizarre angels are, how rare they were prior to their introduction in s4, and how the early seasons especially play with the cosmic horror element of them having to exist on earth, I think it’s maybe not a huge stretch to conceive of them as these vast informational networks and not like discrete bodies that are separate from each other. The Host is the amalgam of all angels, and angels are established in the show to be vehicles for God’s will who carry out orders without question. They are also, again, established to have advanced modern knowledge of things like math and string theory and natural selection. spn is actually a really good study in the naturalisation of religion into state authority, infusing the natural sciences (which are regulated and controlled by government bodies like the academy and scientific agencies) with religious importance, and naturalising religious figures such as angels by positioning them as authorities on science.

Anyway sorry lol this is all over the place. The point I’m trying to make is that, while this is not supported in canon explicitly, I think there’s a decent argument to be made that angels defy descriptions of “existing in a place.” We know their grace and their true bodies are separate things, we know from S8 that Cas can exist simultaneously in both Heaven and on Earth at the same time, and we know angels have the ability to monitor earth (and other places in spacetime) without interacting with it directly. I tend to therefore think of angels and Heaven as these not-spaces, and more like a cluster of information that gathers to exchange knowledge. Heaven is the medium through which that happens, and then angels converse with one another through that medium. They don’t necessarily have to “travel” there because their true forms exist discontiguously from their consciousness, so presumably angels don’t have to physically move their bodies to places in order to interact with other angels. So Heaven also doesn’t have to be strictly physical.

This is where I think spn suffers from its own visual medium. The written word is a lot more effective at communicating incomprehensibility (HDM’s version of angels described them as vast celestial architecture, and you can see giant impossible walls hanging out of their bodies when you look at them from your periphery), and I think that’s also why early seasons Heaven and Hell were a lot more intriguing because they were visually absent from the show. AND, also, the one time we did see Hell in the early season (the shot of Dean waking up in Hell in the s3 finale), it was depicted as an interlocking network of chains, which fucking owns and is partially the inspiration for conceptualising Heaven in a similar way.

—

*using the word biblical as a result of my own limitation of knowledge. I know a lot of the lead writers are Jewish and I don’t mean to downplay that. I also know spn exists in a bizarre intersection of being kinda Catholic and kinda Jewish so I don’t know what the exact appropriate term for this would be.

[deancasheadcanons]

Something Only I Would Know

[ao3]

1.7k words

15x20 fix-it (kinda), warning for Dean being ableist, thanks to @saywhatjessie for letting me use her headcanon that Dean could’ve been paralyzed by the rusty nail

Just as Dean was hoisting his left leg onto his bed, one of the phones rang in the library. He sighed and moved his leg rest back into place, then wheeled out to the hallway, hoping he could get to the phone in time. Sam was on a hunt with Eileen out in Iowa, and Jody and Claire were taking out some werewolves up in Nowhere, Michigan, but other than that, nobody else should be calling. 

He didn’t make it in time. As he sifted through the phones to figure out where the missed call came from, something crashed in the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” he yelled forcefully, grabbing a shotgun from a table before pushing himself to the kitchen.

“Son of a bitch,” a familiar voice said just as Dean turned the corner.

He looked right at himself, all six-foot-one of himself standing in the middle of the kitchen, his legs working just fine.

“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” other Dean said, progressively raising his voice until the end of the sentence was a shout. He glared up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna kill you, Chuck!”

“Which universe are you from?” Dean asked calmly.

Other Dean glared down at him, jaw clenched. “The real one. And you’re obviously from one where I’m bad enough at my job to land myself in a goddamn wheelchair. That’s real great.”

“No,” Dean said, sizing his other self up. “You’re too much like me.” A memory came back to him, something he said to himself in a situation similar to this one, years ago. “Tell me something only I would know.”

“Oh come on, don’t quote me to me.” Other Dean took a beer out of the fridge and tossed the cap in the direction of the trash can. “Although if you’re from a different universe, I guess you wouldn’t have a memory of that. I must just say the same shit in every version of myself.”

“I do have a memory of it.” 

They glared at each other.

Dean said, “Camp Chitaqua.”

Other Dean blinked. “Yeah, OK.” He took a long pull from his beer, staring pointedly at the wheelchair as he did. “What year is it?”

“It’s 2022.”

Other Dean dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Ah, fuck. How’d we end up crippled?”

“No. Tell me something only I would know.”

Other Dean stared at him, annoyed. He lost the staring contest after half a minute, shaking his head and scoffing and then taking another long drink of beer. He then looked down at the table and said loudly, “Cas.”

“Excuse me?”

Other Dean raised his eyes. “He told me he loved—he said he loved me. And that he realized he couldn’t have what he wanted. And then the Empty took him.”

Dean ran his tongue along his top teeth. “OK, you are me.” He pushed his wheelchair forward and moved the shotgun from his lap to the table. “And you must be from 2020.”

“Oh goddamn it, I’m gonna lose my legs that soon?” Other Dean stood and said, “Christ, I need a stronger drink.”

“We don’t have anything stronger.”

“What?”

“I don’t drink anymore. The beer is for everybody else that comes through here.”

Other Dean sat back down. “Is Sam—”

“On a hunt with Eileen. Everybody’s fine. Well, except.” Dean gestured to the room and shook his head. 

“Except your legs?”

He leveled himself with an impatient glare. “No. It’s a C7 spinal cord injury, and it’s really not that big of a fucking deal. I was talking about Cas.”

Other Dean looked at his beer bottle, picking at the label with his thumbs. “Chuck is trying to show us that we have no free will. He threw me here to prove that I can’t change anything about our lives.”

“Oh, like The Time Traveler’s Wife?”

Other Dean made a face at him, but then his eyebrows raised in realization. “Right, we read that a couple years ago. Man, I forgot about that. Yeah. Like, why would I try to bring Cas back if I’m sitting here with you now, and you’re telling me Cas never came back? So what’s the point of me trying to bring him back if I already know he’s not here in 2022?”

Dean’s eyebrows knit together as he thought for a minute. Eventually he said, “I know you’re me because I never told anybody that Cas is in love with me.”

“Whoa, whoa, he didn’t say—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” Dean swallowed. “Let me tell you something, alright? You’re gonna spend a couple months having no fucking idea what to do with yourself, no clue how to cope, so you and Sam are gonna try to do some run-of-the-mill hunts, and guess what? On the very first one you’re gonna break your fucking back after being impaled on some shitty nail in the wall. You’re gonna spend six months laid up in bed feeling sorry for yourself, drinking yourself stupid, wanting to die, praying yourself hoarse to Cas, and Cas is not gonna fucking show up!” 

He took a ragged breath and continued, “And Jack doesn’t either. And then Sam’s gonna tell you that he needs you to get your shit together, and it’s not because he needs your help saving the world or even just needs your help on a hunt, it’s because he wants to get married, wants to marry Eileen, so you’re gonna put your sorry life back together enough to be the best man at your brother’s wedding, and that’s when you’re gonna realize that there’s more to your shit life than the selfish things that you want—things like, I don’t know, being able to walk? And having Cas.” He closed his eyes. “You’re gonna realize that Cas meant that he was in love with you, that he wanted to be with you, and you’re gonna have to deal with the enormity of that. That this—that a being so ancient and so huge and literally so incomprehensible to you that your ears bled the first time you heard him speak—that he could learn love? From your sorry ass? Look at me, Dean. Listen to what I’m saying to you.” 

He waited until other Dean looked him in the eye. “Eventually you’re gonna accept the fact that Cas lived thousands of years without doing anything other than following the will of heaven, never changing course, only to meet you and learn love so completely that the only thing he wants is to be with you. The first selfish, human desire of his life. You. And you didn’t even get the time to process it, to tell him that you love him, too, before he was gone. So the best you can do is try to actually live your fucking life, because he died to save you.”

The silence between them was heavy. Eventually other Dean said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I never told anybody. Listen to me, Chuck said Cas didn’t do what he was supposed to do. He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you—us. He changed things when he told you. So you can change things, too. Go back to your time and fucking tell somebody. Is Jack still around? For fuck’s sake, tell Jack.”

“I can’t—everything you just told me, I can’t—I haven’t…”

“Dean, listen. I know. I know how you feel. I know you, and I know you don’t trust yourself, but look at me. I’m different than you, alright? You can trust me. I just threw two years of emotional processing at you, of course you can’t deal with that. But you can do just one thing. Just one. Tell Jack.”

Other Dean studied his face. “You really are different.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean shrugged and looked at his legs. “Turns out being loved by a cosmic being changes you.”

“And being paralyzed.”

“No, trust me, that’s easier to deal with.”

Other Dean huffed a small laugh and nodded. “Uh, what are you gonna do? What happens now?”

“Don’t worry about me, you just—”

A loud crack cut Dean off, then his other self disappeared out of existence. He looked around the kitchen warily, as if something dramatic was about to happen. Instead, a phone once again began ringing in the library. 

As Dean wheeled through the hallway, he felt a splitting headache and had to stop and close his eyes. Images flashed through his brain, mostly of him and Cas, and then they abruptly stopped and he felt fine. The phone was still ringing.

He only made it a few more feet before the headache returned, worse than before. Images, so fast and loud in his head that it felt like his brain would explode. When they stopped, he blinked his eyes open and had a realization. 

“It’s not The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s—” he did a 180 in his wheelchair and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Cas standing at the end of the hall. “ — Looper.”

“Ah, we’ve finally caught up, then?” Cas said shyly as he walked toward Dean. He squatted in front of him, not in a patronizing way, but as a gesture of trust, submission. “You said it would be soon. You made me watch Looper so I would understand . Does your head feel alright?”

Dean put his hand to Cas’ face, delicately, like he might disappear if he touched him too much. “Cas.”

Cas turned his head and kissed Dean’s palm, then held his hand against his face and smiled at him. “I’m right here.”

The memories kept coming back to Dean, the changed timeline, his past self defeating Chuck and immediately telling Jack that he had to bring Cas back because he never got the chance to tell him he loved him, too. Then—still getting hurt on a hunt, still needing time to process and adjust, to give up drinking, learn how to accept Cas’ love and to love Cas properly in return—but easier this time, because Cas was there. Cas gave him space and time, all while loving him and taking care of him.

Dean took a deep breath. “C’mere, Cas.”

He didn’t wait. He pulled Cas up into his arms and buried his face in his neck and said, “I love you, you can have me. You can have me forever.”

Cas laughed gently. “I know, Dean. I love you, too.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES:

The Time Traveler's Wife (book) - Henry has no agency and no free will because he time travels randomly to different parts of his life and therefore knows everything that happens before it happens, and can't change any of it.

Looper (movie) - When people time travel to the past and try to change their lives, their memories change in the present as the timeline of their lives change.

[norahastuff]

Damn that was a good episode. To me it’s felt like there’s been this great sense of dread hanging over this last stretch of episodes, and in an odd way it’s almost a relief to have it brought to the forefront like this.

I think many of us knew that following Billie’s plan was not going to work out. She’s just another cosmic being, a greater power and thus her priorities were always going to lie elsewhere. Chuck’s motivated by the desire for power and by his ego and narcissism. For Billie it’s about rules and order. They see humanity as inconsequential or perhaps in Billie’s case, an afterthought. Hence why following her plan was never going to work. The importance of humanity - the idea that each human matters and is worth something - as well as free will are the two main themes this show is built on. It will take someone who loves humanity and values free will to be able to fix this.

We’ve known that Chuck’s been orchestrating things, but I found it interesting to see how exactly he’d been doing that. This season has put a lot of focus on Dean’s anger. Dean had it drilled into him since he was a child that he was not allowed to be weak, that he had to be the strong one. This resulted in him gravitating towards other unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to survive, and when whiskey and denial weren’t enough, he used anger. He cloaked his fear, sadness and confusion under layers of rage because he didn’t know how else to confront these feelings.

Chuck knows this about Dean, but he also has a very surface level read on Dean and who he really is. Sure he can use Dean’s anger to manipulate him, but that’s not all Dean is. We’ve seen from his tearful prayer to Cas earlier this season:

“I don't know why I get so angry. I just know…I know that it’s- it's just always been there. And when things go bad, it just…it comes out. And I can't -I can't stop it. No matter how - how bad I want to, I just can't stop it.”

Underneath the anger, there’s pain and vulnerability, and when Dean allows himself to feel those things and be honest with himself that’s something Chuck doesn’t really understand, and that’s when Dean becomes unpredictable. Chuck’s relying on the versions of his characters that he created, not really getting that they go deeper than that now.

The ultimate example of this is Cas. Cas seemed to exist around the periphery this week, but honestly that’s exactly what I would have expected in an episode that was about the main characters in Chuck’s book. Cas wasn’t supposed to play a major role in any of this. Sam and Dean were. Amara was. Jack had the biggest role of all, but Cas wasn’t supposed to be in this story, and Chuck once again confirms he was never supposed to be in any of the stories.

Cas defecting was the one wild card that led to all the dominoes falling back in season 4 (ok yes I’m mixing metaphors but you get my point.) That made him an interesting toy for a while. Wind him up and watch him go. I found Chuck repeating Cas’ greatest one liner hilarious. He had such contempt in his voice and I think he was partly annoyed he could never write a line as epic as the one Cas effortlessly came up with. Actually Michael mocked that line last season too, both him and Chuck doing their best impressions of Cat’ gravelly delivery of “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

I have no evidence to support this other than how irritated Chuck seemed by that line and also his famously bad writing skills. I also maintain that Chuck had no part whatsoever in crafting the magnificent “Hey assbutt!”

Cas was definitely not supposed to be in that part of the story.

But Cas no longer interests Chuck. He doesn’t fit into the story he wants to tell and so Chuck believes he has no place in it. And you know what? He’s right. Cas doesn’t fit into this story because he exists outside of it. His choices were his own. That gave him a power that no one else really had, and I think Cas has felt the weight of this for a long time. He knows what it’s like to have no free will, he lived that way for eons, and he also knows what breaking out of that feels like. His unfamiliarity with free will and how to navigate such a complicated concept led to him making choices he’s never been able to forgive himself for. It’s made him feel profound pain, guilt and confusion about his place in the world, if he even has one.

And yet as he’s told us over and over again, he wouldn’t take that back for anything.

“What would you rather have? Peace or freedom?”

We know what Cas would choose. What he continues to choose. He told Dean at the beginning of the season that he knew what was real “we are.” I don’t know if it was wise for Chuck to confirm just how right Cas actually was about that. Cas has spent this whole season thinking he had no role, no importance in the grand plan, but as he now learns, he’s had no place in any of the fights…and yet he’s never let that stop him before.

As a sidenote, I’m not saying much about this because I’m curious about whether the show will address this properly next week but I wonder how this affects Dean’s view of Cas. I don’t think Dean fully believed him earlier this season when Cas reassured him that they were real. As much as he loves and cares for Cas, Dean has always felt insecure about his place in Cas’ life and what he means to him.

So when Dean discovered that he had in fact just been a hamster in wheel being controlled by Chuck, it’s not too much of a surprise that he would start to question his relationship with the angel who literally fell from heaven and into his life. Although I know after their purgatory getaway, they were in a much better place, I think there was still a part of Dean that didn’t fully trust that the feelings were real. There has been so much mess and pain in the past with Cas, how is he to know how much of that was Chuck trying to create drama and how much of it was Cas’ own choices? Well now he knows. It all was. Every time Cas chose him over anything (or anyone) else, it was real.

This episode raised a lot of questions about Cas. Now I just have to try sit patiently and hope next week will answer some of them.

[verobatto]

Destiel Chronicles

Vol. LXXX

It was a love story from the very beginning.

Is Not Allowed (Part I)

(12x10a)

Hi my dears! And we arrived to one of our favorite Destiel episodes: 'Lily Sanders has some regrets.'

We have a lot of Destiel to discuss here, more of it you have read for sure already in this fandom, because we are late with the subtext, but I decided to divide this meta in two parts.

Married Couple and the Third Wheel

When the episode starts, we have our little moose and Dean having this peculiar dialogue...

SAM: I don't think we have the kind of mom who's gonna stay home and make us chicken soup for dinner, you know? You talk to Cass yet?

DEAN: No.

Sam jumps from mom, one of Dean's concerns, to Cas. He has to take this chance, and he's asking because we could assume, he was seeing something odd between them going on. (Poor third wheel), he noticed, as the insightful person Sam is, Dean and Cas are not talking to each other. He had noticed the awkward silence...

I want to hug that moose...

SAM: So, what, you're just gonna keep walking past each other in the kitchen, not saying a word?

DEAN: Maybe.

I love Yockey, because he's pointing here through Sam's lines how Dean and Cas behave like two lovers fighting. Is a married couple, and he's the poor kid in the middle. And I love his body language, because he is moving the chair as if it was a game in the park, while looking at his brother like "you are two kids. You are so in love and fight like two love birds." Hope in his eyes, because he's making his brother talk with him about Cas. This is a perfect parallel to season 8, the bunker again, and Dean mad at Cas again, but this time Sam is more used to it. And kind of amused.

SAM: Look, yes, Cass killed Billie, but he saved us. He saved Mom. How long are you gonna stay pissed?

DEAN: I'm not pissed that he cares about us, you know. I'm – I'm grateful. But Billie said there would be “cosmic consequences” if that deal got broken. You have any idea what that means?

SAM: No.

DEAN: Neither do I, but I'm pretty sure it ain't jellybeans and g-strings.

SAM: My point is, Cas thought he was doing the right thing.

CAS: I was doing the right thing.

Sam is always Castiel's attorney, he was that in season 8 saying 'Is Cas!", And he is now trying to make his brother to understand why Cas did it.

Sam is saying what Dean always says about Cas, but is not working this time, because they're already married hahahaa. Sorry. But is true.

And the bickering continues...

CAS: No. This is personal.

DEAN: Meaning what?

CAS: Another angel. An old friend. He called out for help.

DEAN: Oh. Good old reliable angel radio.

May I point here how jealous is Dean? Because every time Cas mentions angels or Heaven, he is there to spread his jealousy all over. Just thinking about Cas coming back to Heaven or to his old Garrison, makes Dean lose it.

CAS: He was begging for help and then he just stopped. I need to know if he's still alive.

SAM: Yeah, all right. Well... we'll come with you.

CAS: Both of you?

There comes the sassy look, I love it, Cas is so done with Dean's attitude, but he is not aware he's acting just like him. I know Sam is saying 'Kiss already!'

DEAN: Sure. Yeah, we could help. Gotta make sure you don't do anything else stupid.

Dean's favorite quote to exasperate his angel... The level of bickering is reaching the top, but there's still even more... Are you praying for Sammy?

The awkward silence in the car makes Sam wanting to die. Is the same sensation an old friend feels when an old couple is fighting, and he knows both of them. Being in the middle of that war is stressing.

We, as spectators, don't know if we should laugh or just feel sorry for Sam.

Is a very uncomfortable situation...

Thank you Yockey for writing this clearly as two men in love fighting, making it blatant to any eye watching.

Because we have the exaggerating reactions, the rolling eyes, the frowns and the sassiest quotes and looks. And the jealousy at his maximum expression. YES, DEAN AND CAS ARE IN LOVE AND THEY'RE FIGHTING.

SAM: All right. Guys, you know what? This – this silent treatment thing, it's silly. It's not gonna work. Whatever we're walking into, we should, you know, probably have an actual plan.

Sam is so done with it, he's just throwing some reason over there.

CAS: (sighs) What do you wanna know?

DEAN: Oh, he speaks.

SAM: Enough. Cass, you said when you heard Benjamin, he – he was screaming.

Okay, Sam is scolding his brother, because he had just asked them to stop, and he keeps acting like a child, so, time to stop him.

CAS: It was, um... Look, Benjamin wouldn't call for help lightly. And he wouldn't put himself in harm's way if he could help it.

DEAN: Wow, this Benjamin seems like he's pretty cool, you know. Like he wouldn't make any half-cocked, knee-jerk choices.

Well, look at this, Dean is far from stop, he is trying to annoy Castiel even more. Trying to throw a little of irony, and Cas will reply with some acid words...

Gif set credit @shirtlesssammy 👇

CAS: Yeah, you know what I like about him? Is that he's sarcastic, but he's thoughtful and appreciative, too.

DEAN: Now what is that supposed to mean?

SAM: Okay, okay, the road, road. Dude, watch the road.

This is one of my fav scenes, because he got so jealous over Castiel's words about Benjamin, that is hilarious, he even turns around to face the angel, ignoring he was the driver, and is SO SO BLATANT, AGAIN, SO CLEAR TO OUR EYES THEY'RE TWO LOVE BIRDS FIGHTING.

What is allowed

Let's jump now into a concept that will be explored this season and the following. Something that every angel has written in his brains: Sacred Oath.

Yockey will show us in this episode the two difference about what is allowed and what is not allowed to angels about their relationships with humans.

Pay attention to Castiel's words here...

CAS: Benjamin is always very careful. Long ago, he found a powerfully devout vessel in Madrid, and her faith, it... she gave him everything – her trust and her body.

This speech Cas makes about Benjamin and her female vessel, is nothing else than a profound bond, when he says 'she gave him everything--her trust her body.' He's talking about which kind of relationship is allowed for an angel to have with a human. Sharing vessel, is an intimate act of trust and submission. But the way Cas is talking about it, the sentiment he put on those words, is talking about something else there. So maybe Benjamin and this woman fell in love, and the only allowed way to share their lives together, was through sharing vessel. @emblue-sparks has a very interesting analysis about how this premise introduced by Yockey could be taken as a theory of Dean and Cas sharing vessels since season 13. You can find their thoughts here. I based my current Destiel endgame spec on this too, and in more clues I found mostly in season 15. You can find that spec here.

DEAN: Wait. So Benjamin's a woman.

CAS: Benjamin is an angel. His vessel is a woman. But it – it's – it's more than that. She's not just his vessel.

SAM: She's... She's his friend.

CAS: Yeah. Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger.

And we love Yockey, shows us here the genderless nature of angels, based on the vessels. When he says BENJAMIN IS AN ANGEL, he is saying he is not a woman, not a man, even when his pronoun is He/Him.

There will be another example when Yockey shows us fem vessel! Castiel.

When Cas says 'it's more than that. She's not just his vessel." Is giving us clues, again, about the kind of profound bond Benjamin and the spanish woman shared.

I have to cut the analysis here, and I will let the "not allowed" topics for the next meta.

To Conclude:

I consider Yockey as the Destiel guide writer in Dabb's team. Each episode he wrote, he made a guide with steps our ship will follow in the incoming chapters.

This time he is putting in order a couple of concepts about angels, allowed relationships with humans and forbidden relationships.

This is very important to understand Castiel's POV about his own feelings for Dean.

He wrote an old married couple bickering, and Sam represented all of us, trying to survive to uncomfortable silences and bitterness.

Hope you like this meta, see you in the next one!

Tagging @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weird-dorky-little-deana @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @authorsararayne @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @isthisdestiel @dizzypinwheel @jawnlockwinchester @horsez2 @qanelyytha

@destielle @agusvedder @spnsmile @shippsblog @robot-feels @superlock-in-the-tardis @superduckbatrebel @2musiclover2 @nickelkit @anon-non2 @cea1996

If you want to be added or removed from this list, just let me know.

If you want to read the previous metas from this season, here you have the links:

Vol. LXXV, LXXVI, LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXIX

Buenos Aires, September 22th 2020 7:03 PM

[nellie-elizabeth]

Supernatural: Inherit the Earth (15x19)

That was somehow simultaneously a crowded mess, and a complete anticlimax. I'm literally just like... super confused and afraid about what the finale is going to be now.

Cons:

Sam's the dog person. That's part of canon. I liked the moment when Dean found the dog, or whatever, but I wish Sam had gotten a moment with the puppy too, before Chuck took it away. A small thing, but one of those typical wrong details in Buckleming episodes, where it just honestly doesn't seem like they know the characters very well.

Lucifer and Michael have a fight in the Bunker and Michael takes Lucifer out really, really easily. So like. Remember when the first five seasons of the show were the buildup to the Apocalypse, and Sam sacrificed himself for an eternity in Lucifer's Cage to stop it from happening? Apparently a fight between the two archangels is just a bit of fisticuffs, nothing to get worked up about. That annoyed me. But I guess consistency has never been something this show has cared much about...

Also just... Lucifer in general, coming back for like five minutes so he can mug at the camera and then be unceremoniously killed? Here's the thing: we had Billie as Death, and she hated them but maybe it would have been interesting to see her and the boys team up to figure out Chuck's ending... but instead, she's gone, Lucifer gets a pointless return, provides us with another Death, who is there for two seconds, says a couple of vaguely funny lines, and then dies... and we still never find out what's in the book.

The fight with Chuck was so badly edited! It was so weird to see him just wail on Sam and Dean, and repeated shots of him hitting them, and them getting up, while he kept saying "okay fellas, enough, please stay down" over and over again. Given that the whole "erasing the people from the world" thing was so much like Infinity War, I kept comparing this fight with God to the climax of Endgame. In that instance, you have a small group of intrepid fighters going up against a big bad evil, and then just at the moment when they're run down and helpless, the whole crowd of friends returns and joins in the fight. Instead of that, it's just Jack showing up and absorbing God's powers, and then they leave him begging on the beach. Not a bad ending for Chuck, which I'll get to in a moment, but the epic-ness was seriously missing from this final showdown.

So, when Jack returned the world to its normal state, did he bring back all of their friends, too? I want to believe this was something that Covid took away from them, where instead of seeing shots of Charlie and her girlfriend, of Donna, Jody, the girls, Bobby, Eileen, they were forced to use stock footage of just random people around the world returning. Would have been cooler to see the epic return... and also super weird that Sam and Dean sit quietly in the bunker talking about free will, and we don't see Sam pull out his phone and call his girlfriend, like... I get not wanting to muddy the ending of the episode with a lot of fallout stuff, and I'm sure we'll get that next week? Like, I hope, anyway? But as it stood for this hour of television, it was super weird to me that the boys didn't immediately want to check on all of their friends to make sure everyone had returned from the dead.

Jack becoming the new God is actually a totally appropriate ending, people were speculating that he'd be the new God or Death or Empty, or some cosmic entity, anyway... and this honestly felt very fitting... BUT, I will say that there are two really, really stupid things about it. One, his "I'm everything and everywhere now" speech was super cheesy... "I'm in the air and the rocks and every drop of rain" or whatever. Such a cliche, I was almost painfully embarrassed listening to him. I honestly would have preferred less is more, here. Like, what if he'd said the stuff about how humans can be their best when they need to be, that was a good line... and then Sam says "what if we want to see you? Grab a beer?" And Jack just says "I'm around" and then vanishes, leaving it vague? I think the idea of a hands-off deity is perfect, of course... makes sense for the "free will wins the day" ending we've got going here, but I didn't think stating it outright was the best move.

The second reason Jack becoming God was rendered kind of comedically awful in the way it happened is... well, elephant in the room, let's talk about how Cas was handled in this episode.

Here's a quote from last week's review:

"I'm worried that Cas dying is gonna get swallowed up with everyone dying and not get its due, thus making the confession completely isolated. Like, here you go, gays, have this one scene, which, in isolation is quite heartfelt from Cas' perspective, but can be carefully boxed up and not touched for the last two hours of the show. If they don't want to touch on how this would affect Dean specifically, they don't have to. He can be generally angsty and sad about Cas, but they could get away with never bringing it up again, and that is some grade-A level bullshit right there, my friends."

And... yeah. Look, I know there are people on Tumblr right now saying that this episode being the "brothers only" ending means that next week we'll get Cas back and Dean will confess his love or whatever... but y'all, it's not going to happen. I'm sorry. I'd love to be wrong. If I'm wrong, I will gladly eat crow and celebrate along with the rest of you, but I just... I've been burned before. I know what's going on here, and it's not what you think it is.

Dean was undeniably devastated in this episode. We see him drinking to excess, falling asleep on the floor, grasping onto tiny moments of joy like with the dog and then being furious and upset when they fall through. But that devastation was not textually about Cas specifically. Sure, there were moments, like him telling God to bring everything back, and then namedropping Cas specifically. Or the way he ran up the stairs when Cas' voice was on the phone. But what I'm saying is? Those are crumbs, there for those of us who care to gobble up, easily ignored and subsumed by the larger losses the boys are suffering. Sam is devastated too, guys. About his girlfriend, about Charlie, about Donna, and Jody, etc. etc. etc. Who's to say their grief is any different from one another, even though they're handling it with different coping mechanisms? The "I love you" wasn't even on the "previously on".

Like. There's a universe where Dean does get a moment of Cas-related catharsis in the finale, even though Misha's not coming back. Maybe he has a private moment to grieve just for him, to contemplate that specific loss. But I'm telling you: I don't care if an openly gay man wrote 15x18, I don't care that Misha found it moving. The bottom line is, Cas confessing his love for Dean was the moment of catharsis the show was willing to offer us. We ain't getting much else.

So going back to Jack, why on earth does nobody suggest that maybe when he's popping the rest of the world back to the way it's supposed to be, he also brings Cas back? This is what I'm talking about with contrived sacrifices. Last week, they could have written a way for Dean to get out of that scrape without Cas dying. And this week, Jack's determination to be a "hands-off" God is not enough to explain why he wouldn't restore his father Castiel from the Empty. Especially since Chuck brought Lucifer back from the Empty, proving that God can do that. Even though that contradicts earlier lore but whatever. The point is, I'm saying it's sloppy. Cas' death, Cas staying dead, does not feel like an earned inevitability to me. I'm prepared to eat my words if they bring him back in the finale, but even if that happens (which it won't), he's not going to be smooching Dean Winchester on the mouth, y'all. He's just not.

So then that ending. "Finally free," says Dean, completely unaware that he's echoing the theme from the end of season five but making it hopeful now for some reason? And that end montage felt like an ending 100%, and I won't say it was bad to see it, see all the memories, the characters... I mean, Charlie dancing in the elevator, getting glimpses of Ellen and Jo, Bobby, Crowley... I'm not going to complain about that, it was honestly quite fun, but it also felt extremely anticlimactic and gave us no sense of where the characters are going to go from here. And yes, I know we have an episode next week, it's just...

Here's the thing I'm scared of, and I'm going to go ahead and put it here in the "cons" section because I don't know where it belongs yet. Despite my complaints about this episode, thematically there was one thing it got right: the answer to defeating Chuck wasn't destined, it wasn't in a book of preordained endings. They had to come up with it by themselves, using the tools at their disposal, and they won, and they get free will now, they get the release from having someone else tell their story. Great. So... what does that leave us next week?

As mentioned above, I really don't think the final 43 minutes is going to be an epic gay love story where Dean fights to get Cas back, I really don't. That leaves us two options: either a tepid re-tread of the themes already established, an epilogue of sorts where we just get to see a life in the day, a new normal for the boys. I wouldn't be furious about this, but I also think it won't really feel like closure for me. They just keep hunting? They keep saving people? That's fine, I guess, but they can't really walk back the fact that God is their son, can they? When they die the next time, do they go to the Empty? Who is Death, now? Are Heaven and Hell okay? Are we meant to be convinced that nothing will ever come back to bite them in the ass, they'll live long lives, and a benevolent afterlife is waiting for them when it's over? I'm not convinced I believe in things being that simple, so it sort of seems like the show would end by saying "okay, and more of the same."

The second possibility is worse, though, that being a total status-quo shift, like the end comes and the Empty is after them and they have to become the new Death and Empty as some speculated, or some wild harebrained plot twist gets thrown in at the last second and undoes the actual good parts of the theme established here. I hope for the first, but I don't know that it'll make me happy, to be quite honest. I really don't want it to feel this way, but Cas being gone is the big elephant in the room, for me. It truly is.

Pros:

I did like the earlier parts of the episode, the eeriness and the helplessness of them being alone. Continuing with the Avengers comparisons, it was very similar to the long, slow opening to Endgame, where we see a lot of grief, a lot of helplessness, an lot of directionless moping. That felt appropriate and it made it all the more invigorating when Michael showed up, giving us a spark of direction in which to move.

While I thought the fight with Chuck was edited really strangely and didn't work for me, I did like this ending for Chuck. Very much like the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Chuck doesn't die, which he honestly would have found a satisfying, creative ending for his story. Instead, he gets to live on as a normal human, sans powers, and be forgotten. Brutal and appropriate! It ties back into the free will thing. Chuck can do whatever he wants with his remaining time, but he can't steal other people's choices from them any longer. It's the black and the white, the good and the bad, of being just... human. Which ties in with Sam and Dean being more or less hopeful about their outlook moving forward. (God, I'm so fucking scared they're going to screw up the few things I liked about this episode in next week's finales.)

Like I said, I did find Jack becoming God an appropriate ending for him as a character. It's the right type of bittersweet: he's there, and we can imagine that in the future, he does go visit Sam and Dean for a beer. Or maybe he doesn't, and that's okay too. Knowing he's at peace, knowing he's benevolent, and that he'll do the best he can for the people of the world(s). It's nice, a comforting deity instead of a manipulative overlord. And the fact that his benevolence and kindness and compassion are born out of a human mother, and two human fathers, and an angel who embraced humanity with everything in himself... instead of from Lucifer, who tried to create him in his image? Well, that's a lovely resolution for a character that became a surprising favorite over the years.

As I think I mentioned last week, I'm willing to let this show manipulate my emotions here at the end, when it can manage to do so. So yeah, of course I loved that Cas and Jack's names are added to the table along with SW, DW, and MW. Obviously that's adorable as hell. And as I said, the montage worked for me, it was certainly quite lovely. I just... like I said at the start of this, I'm just frankly terrified of what's coming next week.

I mean, here's the thing, I want an ending that honors Sam and Dean as the protagonists of this show, but I want it where they live in the bunker, and Eileen and returned-from-the-dead-Castiel live with them as their partners. If someone told me I couldn't change a thing about what's happened so far, but I could decide how the last episode went, that's how I'd end it. Showing a network of hunters getting support and able to live more stable, reasonable lives while still doing a dangerous job. Sam embracing his intellectual prowess and running things from the bunker, Dean and Cas going out on the road, Sam and Eileen going out on the road, or any combination therein. Jack watching over them benevolently from above. Jody and Donna and the girls living their best lives. Kaia and Claire as a couple, onscreen. A glimpse of a more stable afterlife, now that Jack is there to run things, the confirmation of a peaceful ending whenever our human protagonists do finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Peace, but change, too.

I just don't believe that's what we're getting. I can't believe it, and that makes me really frightened for what comes next week. I'm prepared to be pissed off. Quite frankly, I'm expecting it.

6/10

[mittensmorgul]

Season 13 and the Big Bad

A defining characteristic of Supernatural in seasons past was the early identification and buildup of the Big Bad character of the season, to the degree that the cosmic escalation of big bads became a running joke. And then the show itself transcended the running joke with the whole “God’s SISTER!” thing, and honestly, where the heck do you even go from there.

Demons, Bigger and Scarier Demons, More Demons, Apocalypse-starting Demons with a side of Dick Angels, Lucifer and Michael, Raphael and Monsters, Leviathan, Demons and basically the Winchesters screwing with the natural order, Angels and Bigger and Badder Demons, MoC!Dean, God’s Sister the Darkness…

I mean who else was waiting for Fuckhands McMike to show up?

Once you hit that level, the whole IDEA of a single season Big Bad just… loses the power to engage. Almost everything after that point is gonna have a Been There Done That element to it.

That’s why the whole point of s12 wasn’t about a Big Bad Character, it was about the Winchesters finally having moved out beyond the plot far enough to look back at their legacy in a critical way. The BMoL weren’t there to act as the Big Bads, despite filling in part of that role. Same with Lucifer. Same with Mary. The real Big Bad of s12 was the Winchesters’ past, their legacy, their “destiny.” And finally beginning to find some sort of resolution and a fuller understanding of themselves. And that theme is continuing full-steam ahead in s13.

The real Big Bad is the friends we made along the way.

Nah, just kidding. The real Big Bad of s13 so far is Dramatic Irony. But let’s back up and examine the players on the board so far:

(under a cut because it’s like 3.6k words and this just seems practical, if annoying) :P

--There was much speculation that Wee Lil Nephilim Jack could “grow into his power” and become the season’s Big Bad, and 13.01 certainly tried hard to make us believe it… for about 15 minutes. He’s certainly got a terrifying amount of power at his disposal, but he’s such a lil marshmallow and just wants to be GOOD so badly. Just give him some nougat and watch him struggle to understand human morality with his Beyond God-like Abilities. So while he’s definitely a source of Major Cosmic Disruption, he can’t really fit the Big Bad bill.

--In 13.02 we met the Kentucky Fried Demon, the last yellow-eyed Prince of Hell, Asmodeus. Thanks to later retconning, we’ve tied yellow-eyed demons right back to the opening scene of the entire series, and the Inciting Incident of all the drama we’ve watched unfold over the last 12+ seasons. And the last one standing has now also been referred to by Lucifer as the “least” of his creations, yet Asmodeus has had a few surprises up his sleeve-- including his shapeshifting. But for all his inexplicable raw power to even confidently best Lucifer in a head to head fight, what are his actual goals? We know he’s long wanted to release the Shedim from Hell, but to what end? What does he even want? He talks a big game, but does he even have a Big Plan? Halfway through the season, we just don’t know, and as a result Asmodeus reads more like a cartoon than an actual threat, despite his “weirdly strong” powers.

--The Empty Entity, which after 13.04 I saw numerous posts speculating that maybe the Entity would grow weary of sleeping (or of being woken up by other angels and demons who somehow began awakening as a result of Cas’s disturbance to the force). But really, the essential nature of that force is… the opposite of interfering in reality. Much as God’s powers of creation held no power in the Empty, the Empty’s eternal stasis can’t hold power within Creation. Obviously Jack’s powers are somehow capable of bridging the gap between them, the same way he’s able to bridge the gap between alternate realities, but so far, the Empty Entity seems like a one-off.

--Billie as the New Death. I, for one, am SO GLAD she’s back, and that the mantle of Death has finally passed on to her. I’d been screaming about her being the New Death since 11.02, and she’s finally come full circle and stepped into that role. As such, she’s in a position to see the full scope of the Cosmic Circumstance, and her previous insistence on what amounts to a tiny cosmic imbalance of the Winchesters’ continued existence is more like a tiny grain of sand out of place while the problems the Winchesters’ continued existence SOLVES is like an entire beach crumbling away. As the linchpins holding the multiverse together, she’s counting on the Winchesters being ALIVE now. Hardly seems Big Bad-ish to have thrown her lot in with the protagonists of the piece, yes? She still has cards to play, especially after warning Dean about the cosmic house of cards and its current precarious state due to Jack’s interference with multidimensional affairs. Rather than having an agenda to do harm, like the Old Death, Billie serves more of a bellwether role. She’s a neutral force that’s acting within her powers to at least drop hints and warnings to the Winchesters.

--Lucifer has incredibly found his way back to the story AGAIN. Like, why won’t he just DIE already? *sighs heavily* At least now he’s been officially de-powered by AU Michael to the point where he’s become rather… ineffective. Poor thing and his little stick. So far, since he’s returned to the regular universe, his function has been running around Chicken Littling at everyone. Ironic since his main stumbling block so far has been his own personal Colonel Sanders impersonator. *cue all the chicken/egg metaphors* *something something chickens coming home to roost* *finger lickin’ good* It’s hard to take those sorts of parallels too seriously.

Just as Asmodeus is the “weakest” incarnation of a Yellow-Eyed Demon who has become “weirdly strong” mostly through the emotional significance that Yellow-Eyed Demons have held for the length of the entire series, Lucifer has become “weirdly weak” himself despite the effect his mere presence has just looming over the entire narrative since he was first mentioned way back in s3. His power is now largely symbolic through the psychological trauma he inflicted on Sam (and now as of 13.12, on Rowena). His Big Bad status seems far more weighty on a personal level for the Winchesters (and particularly on Sam), in finally confronting how their cosmic destiny has truly fucked with their lives.

Lucifer himself, meanwhile, has spent most of the season impotently locked in the AU, physically locked in AU Michael’s Iron Maiden, physically depowered by AU Michael’s rift-opening spell, and then tossed around by his “weakest” creation and locked in a cell for the last six episodes. Granted this gives him motivation for taking action, but his obsession with destroying Michael still seems to be his underlying motivation. Sure, he’s still interested in saving “the last perfect handiwork of God,” i.e. the natural world, but he still doesn’t give a damn about humanity. As of 13.12, the most danger he represents is the fact that the Winchesters have no idea he’s back in this world, and that he’s not the one holding Mary captive in the AU and torturing her. Which brings us tidily to…

--AU Michael. The Ultimate Big Bad of s5, at the end of the day, was Michael. He was the one who insisted on sticking inflexibly to his “destiny.” The “good and obedient son” who was prepared to carry out what he believed he had to, despite every opportunity to resolve the apocalypse peacefully and just choose not to fight. Even LUCIFER tried to make peace with him when they finally met at Stull Cemetery, and yet Michael regarded it as yet one more act of “disobedience” from his disobedient brother. And in the AU, their version of Michael actually won the big throwdown, and as a result left the entire planet a wasteland. Lucifer may have wanted humanity wiped off the planet, but witnessing the destruction of all of God’s creation was a shocking reminder that he never wanted to destroy nature… Michael didn’t even care, as long as he’d fulfilled his destiny. How… righteous (in the worst possible sense of that term, bordering on self-righteous). That has some Big Bad makings, no?

The problem with Michael so far this season is that he’s already succeeded in destroying his version of Lucifer, and destroying his own Earth in the process. It’s a fait accompli in his world, but as soon as he stumbled across the rift and learned of another world where he’d failed in the past, he’s been rejuvenated with fresh purpose. It seems almost compulsive for him-- Find World, Destroy World. It’s like his Prime Objective, and he’s incapable of NOT living up to that destiny. It doesn’t make him a Big Bad, just based on that alone, but it does give viewers the ol’ raised eyebrow of suspicion, just based on Michael’s past history.

Not to mention, Lucifer’s pointed out several times that like Asmodeus who seems “weirdly strong” (and yes I keep harping on that phrase because the Plum Sisters were also “weirdly strong” in 13.12, and for Yockey to write such terribly awkward dialogue there HAS to be a purpose, aside from gently mocking standard Bucklemming dialogue), AU Michael is more powerful than the version that the Winchesters (including Cas) helped defeat in 5.22.

The fact that Lucifer keeps insisting that Michael is so powerful, that Michael always gets his way, for those of us actually WATCHING the show, that’s just… blatantly false. The one thing Michael wanted most back in s5 was for Dean Winchester to say yes to him. It’s the one thing he never got. Because Dean’s will proved stronger than Michael’s sense of destiny and obedience. Back in 5.22, Michael rendered himself irrelevant when TFW “ripped up the ending.” The AU where this version of Michael is from never had the Winchesters to contend with, and so has never had to confront the true power of Free Will. Honestly? With TFW 2.0 resurrected from the ashes, how big of a threat does AU Michael truly pose? Because from OUTSIDE the story? No matter how “weirdly strong” that Michael is, it looks more like he and Lucifer are playing out the same pantomime they did back in s5, with just as much chance of actual success as they’d had back then.

What Michael and Lucifer DO bring to the story right now isn’t so much their power to be New Big Bads, but their power to bring the PERSONAL trauma that Sam and Dean (and Cas, by extension) went through as a result of the original setup and downfall of the Apocalypse, and an outlet for them to finally examine the emotional and psychological fallout of what they’ve suffered through and sacrificed to keep the universe from derailing itself over and over again. Which brings me to…

--The interdimensional rifts themselves. Billie had warned Dean about the cosmic house of cards that was dangerously close to toppling as the characters become more self-aware, and realize there are actually ways to cut through to other universes where they might find a way to give themselves a mulligan… where they might be able to “start all over again,” where they made different choices that led to different results. But the stability of the multiverse relies on individual realities maintaining internal continuity, and not bleeding over into one another at random. Which brings me back around to what Chuck told Dean when he left Dean in charge of the universe back in 11.23, and which Dean referenced in his anguished plea for help in 13.01, namely…

--Dean’s not only the “firewall between light and darkness,” but he’s been set in place as the figurehead for balance in the universe. He’s been appointed the guardian of creation by proxy, and hell he really doesn’t want the job. And yet who else is even going to try? Is that what Lucifer is trying to do, at least on the surface? Is that what Cas is attempting in trying to find Jack? Is that what Sam’s attempting in trying to help Jack learn what it means to be human versus a monster?

--Heaven and their Endangered Species Repopulation Project. It seems the angels are growing more desperate as their numbers dwindle. They’ve mostly ceased their interference on the mortal plane, aside from their desperate quest to find and use Jack’s powers to replenish their numbers. But considering Jack’s power level, it doesn’t really seem like much of a real threat to Jack himself. Considering the burst of power that came from Jack’s “power up” of Kaia, that seemed to make BOTH of them “weirdly powerful” enough to tear open another rift and simultaneously nuke six angels. Something tells me that if Jack wanted it enough, he’d have the power to snuff out pretty much any threat to himself. Sure, he’s trapped in the AU right now, but even that’s effectively removed him from the angels’ grasp anyway. It’s been a non-issue for the most part, and in the overall scheme of things, doesn’t seem like a top priority concern for anyone right this second...

--and finally, after 13.12, Rowena’s true nature and full powers have finally been unbound. What is she? What will she do with her powers? What are her goals now that she’s finally been restored to her full power? Will she retain reluctant Frenemy status with the Winchesters? Will she actively seek revenge against those who wronged her, primarily Lucifer? Will she make a play for power in revenge for Crowley’s demise? What does she even want now that she’s attained the personal freedom and safety she’d been seeking since her first introduction back in s10? Right now, she’s a wild card, but we do love her dearly, and I’m glad she’s back. :)

So… who’s really the big bad?

Between the season’s major themes of “things that look like other things,” and things not being what they seem on the surface, as Lizbob’s been saying all season, the Big Bad seems to be Dramatic Irony. The story ITSELF is its own worst enemy.

It’s the narrative structure screaming, “What you don’t know absolutely can and WILL hurt you.”

And all of this is being delivered through the resurfacing of old friends in slightly “off” ways. How many characters and cases and circumstances have directly pinged circumstances from the Winchesters’ past? Going right back to the opening scenes of 13.01, and the “vision” Dean had after Jack knocked him and Sam out-- the flashback to Mary burning on the ceiling overlaid against her being dragged through the rift by Lucifer in 12.23. The entire setup of that scene was rife with flashbacks to Sam losing Jess in the pilot episode, the woman in white played by Kelly Kline, the yellow-eyed monster in the nursery played by Jack, and Cas playing the role of the loved one who was burned and therefore was supposed to “stay dead.” But Mary had already defied that assumption, because she didn’t stay dead. Cas didn’t stay dead either. And now Rowena has also defied that particular truism...

Right from the start of the season we’ve been confronted with things from the past, but which only hint at the past because they’ve now either been applied to different things, or they’ve been transformed into something different, or encountered under entirely different context.

--The “Black Spur Bar,” which had previously been Demon!Dean’s hangout during his summer of love with Crowley was transformed into an entirely different bar where Dean mourned Crowley’s death and was unwittingly confronted by a new demonic adversary (dramatic irony!).

--Donatello the prophet, now purposeless in this post-prophecy, post-God world, left to live on without his soul, and yet still doing the best he could in the circumstances he was left with.

--Literal Alternate Universe versions of lost friends-- from Bobby to Kevin, to mentions of John and Mary and their existence in that other world. There’s no bigger metaphor for “Things that look like other things” than literal alternate versions of loved ones…

--Missouri Moseley, absent from the narrative for thirteen years, returned to pass on her legacy to her granddaughter, who’d been raised to doubt her own psychic powers and has now been forced to face what having those powers means for her.

--Not to mention Patience Turner’s last name dredges up questions about who the “Turner” who gave his name to James and Patience may have been, and as I sit here watching 11.16 I’m again reminded of the speculation that maybe it was actually Rufus Turner… we may never know, but heck, it’s definitely not wild to believe it might be true.

--Buddy the shapeshifter, in the sense that nobody is GIVEN the name “buddy.” It’s a nickname, and one that Dean has used many times in the past for Cas. But “Buddy” by his very nature… wasn’t. He impersonated Dean and attempted to shoot Sam. He wasn’t their “buddy” either.

--I mentioned her above, but Billie is no longer what she was before. She’s not a reaper, nor a dead reaper, but has been returned to the story as Death.

--The reaper who comes to collect Dean (and who Dean defies) in 13.05 is named JESSICA. That name is never spoken lightly in Supernatural. It’s a name nearly as loaded with personal baggage for the Winchesters as Mary or John, and again resonates straight back to the pilot episode of the series.

--Themes of monsters and the old west and cowboys and time travel (it was an antique pocket watch that even tipped Jack off to the case in Dodge City in the first place), with Cas now fully reintegrated with TFW, all call back to 6.18, even with the same musical cues, but the themes have all been twisted around sideways and reframed to new purpose. The fight’s no longer about external monsters and stopping the apocalypse, but internal monstrousness.

--We all thought Arthur Ketch was dead until he showed back up pretending to be his own “good twin.”

--We all also thought Rowena was dead.

--Nick’s Bar, where Lucifer chose as a convenient spot to have a chat with Cas about the potential Apocalyptic Situation they may be facing… while Lucifer’s now perma-trapped in the vessel formerly known as Nick…

--The new King of the Crossroads who survived less than the run of a single episode before being dethroned… He thought he could be the next Crowley, and Dean slapped him down with the truth, calling him “Some random demon.”

--Smash, aka Alice; the human dragged against her will into matters Supernatural, who pretty much everyone saw and immediately yelled OMG CHARLIE.

--The return of the Wayward crew, Jody, Donna, Claire, Alex… but now they’re no longer victims of the narrative. They’ve got their own entire spinoff. :P

--The Bad Place. Aka Purgatory Redux.

--Darth Kaia

--A monster auction that put the Winchesters on the chopping block, run by an FBI agent who literally served the monster population, in contrast to Human Authority Figures of the past, up to and including the BMoL who’ve fairly unilaterally wanted to destroy monsters in favor of protecting humanity.

--In that same episode, we finally see a bit of Donna’s personal life-- from her care for her niece to her relationship with Doug 2.0, and Doug’s ultimate rejection of the hunting life when he’s finally introduced to it.

--Jamie, aka Dean’s temporary “soul mate” in 13.12, was also the name of the bartender in 4.05 that was symbolically Dean’s “new first time” after having been “rehymenated” after his resurrection from Hell.

Not to mention Various and Sundry Villains, the theme this season being “Not what it appears to be,” as demonstrated at its most basic visual level with physical masks and hoods obscuring identity, monsters that take on different faces like shapeshifters and ghouls, or force their victims to PERCEIVE an altered version of reality such as the wraith.

Things are not what they seem on the surface, and the entire plot, the monsters of the week, and even ALL the potential “Big Bads,” and the narrative structure itself-- which is turning around and around this central point of Dramatic Irony-- is the fact that even us as the audience to this entire spectacle, with our added insight into SOME of the dramatic irony playing out week to week, even WE still do not see the bigger picture.

I'm cautiously optimistic that a lot of the Winchesters' problems regarding what they Don't Know will resolve when Cas joins up with them again. Cas holds a lot of Important Information that Sam and Dean need. They’ve been kept as much in the dark as a result of Cas’s imprisonment as Cas himself has. But even through the early part of the season, the validity of information they’ve worked off of has been suspect at best. The info they got from Jack's Vision Download in 13.09 wasn't the WHOLE truth about Mary’s imprisonment in the AU. They’ve made several rather large inaccurate assumptions based off that quick glimpse, though. Just like Patience's vision of Claire's death wasn't the WHOLE truth either, but it let to making several Big Choices that ended up having Massive Consequences.

Even when they think they're seeing the Big Picture Truth, there's still critical info missing from that picture.

The entire SEASON is the big bad wolf in sheep’s clothing.

That’s the entire POINT.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Ok so if all four of them are gonna be in a *cowboy themed* motel in 13x6 they're gonna have to split up 2 and 2 right??? So I'm really gonna need Dean and Cas to share a room and then have a convo that's reverse of the "Talk to me" one in S8 where instead they talk about how they both did feel suicidal but how they've both overcome it. ~For reasons unknown~

That would be great mirroring, and it’s always good to compare the fun episodes where things seem back to normal to 8x08… However… Sorry, but this is a bummer reply, I’m just not good with leaving off things like this :P

I sort of feel though that neither Dean or Cas got to completely overcome things in their respective paths through dark other worlds… Cas said he’d just keep fighting and even if the standing up was an important part, he acknowledged he was going back with a sense of hopelessness that he’d get what he truly wants - and that’s just how it was in the Empty, while it sounds like he may have forgotten the experience so it’s for now a metaphorical state he passed through and we got to see it vocalised and it probably means roughly where he’s up to. But the despair of resolution, the fact need/want has been called out for US to know it’s a major theme but Cas of course hasn’t actually talked face to face with any Winchester, let alone Dean, to resolve need/want, which is the core of his depression, thematically… He’s come back with levelled up determination and a will to live, which is great, but there’s so much work to do before he feels happy even if he DOES remember the Empty. I’ve written ridiculously long things tracking his arc so I’ll just say that this was a great step forwards for him but in no way actually resolving anything. 

For Dean as well, Billie sent him back but it was with the “work to do” order/motivation that’s made Dean and Sam power through a lot of their worst times, and like how in the Empty nothing new was actually said about Cas, it just brought everything up that was troubling him so we’d get a sample of how he feels, that was just repeating the theme for Dean that he started this season on - that at best he’s going to feel like a guy doing his job, because someone more important than him told him he had to and he can’t stop now. 

Billie’s words are the sort of advice he got in season 7 after Cas (and then Bobby) died, from Bobby, Frank and Eliot Ness, all of which was a variation of the same sort of nihilism about doing the job because it’s the job and you’re the one who does it. I’m in most agreement with the meta I’ve seen that Dean didn’t go into that whole mess looking for a reason to die, he just was in that state Bobby described: 

BOBBY:I want to talk about your new party line.

DEAN:Party? What are you talking about? I don’t even vote.

BOBBY:“The world’s a suicide case. We save it, it just steals more pills”?

DEAN:Bobby, I’m here, okay? I’m on the case. What’s the problem?

BOBBY:I’ve seen a lot of hunters live and die. You’re starting to talk like one of the dead ones, Dean.

DEAN:No, I’m talking the way a person talks when they’ve had it, when they can’t figure out why they used to think all this mattered.

I’m picking on this conversation because it’s the most detailed but also because it’s the one Dean has WITH Bobby so in no way shape or form can it be about Dean losing Bobby, except that of course this episode gave Dean and Sam both a private conversation with Bobby about where they were at, so we could have a good last moment with him each, and also to gauge how they’d react to his death (Dean with this massive depression caused by losing Cas and his betrayal to pile on top of) and Bobby’s last advice apply after as well. His advice being:

BOBBY:Come on, now. You tried to hang it up and be a person with Lisa and Ben. And now here you are with a mean old coot and a van full of guns. That ain’t person behavior, son. You’re a hunter, meaning you’re whatever the job you’re doing today. Now, you get a case of the Anne Sextons, something’s gonna come up behind you and rip your fool head off. Now, you find your reasons to get back in the game. I don’t care if it’s love or spite or a ten-dollar bet. I’ve been to enough funerals. I mean it. You die before me, and I’ll kill you.

Cheery. 

But this is essentially what Billie does for Dean. She reads him, sees he wants to die, and he tells her that he doesn’t matter, so she reassures him that he has a job, that he is important, that he’s in this cosmic position of responsibility. It would almost be encouraging, to know you’re not meant to die that day, that there is a reason for you to be alive. But not for Dean in the state he was in then.

Cas coming back is GREAT and of course it’s going to make Dean wildly happy. But he’s been feeling this way about the job a long, long time in ways that aren’t to do with Cas at all but is just his underlying major trauma that you can see coming from a hundred miles off in season 1:

from 2x09:

DEANI’m tired, Sam. I’m tired of this job, this life … this weight on my shoulders, man. I’m tired of it.

[…]

DEANI just think we should take a break from all this. Why do we gotta get stuck with all the responsibility, you know? Why can’t we live life a little bit?

Or this speech from 2x20 I contractually have to quote at least once a month as a card-carrying Dean!girl:

DEAN All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They’re all dead. And there’s this woman, that’s haunting me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It’s like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn’t want me to be happy. Course I know what you’d say. Well, not the you that played softball but… “So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest. Right?” But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? What, Mom’s not supposed to live her life, Sammy’s not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? It’s… Yeah…

(And, side note, it really annoys me when people make 2x20 about brotherly wuv, platonically or not, because THAT is why Dean decided to go un-wish this life, not because of anything to do with AU Sam, who he still trusted he could find his Sam in >.> I’ll just keep repeating this until I stop stumbling over the idea… :P)

He’s had similar smaller moments like this but season 2, 7 and now 13 are his grief seasons, so I’m most interested in these parallels. Like, just in general. Specifically in season 2 because he was dealing with John’s order to save Sam or kill him, which of course is a dynamic that Jack could horrifyingly repeat for him if Dean gets attached to a kid with the same horrifying destiny. Specifically in season 7 Dean was dealing with losing Cas and it immediately struck him to the core, that even while Cas was still Godstiel he was having mirrors with his season 2 self after losing John:

DEANSounds good. You got any leads on where the demon is? Making heads or tails of any of Dad’s research? Because I sure ain’t. But you know, if we do finally find it - oh. No, wait, like you said. The Colt’s gone. But I’m sure you’ve figured out another way to kill it. We’ve got nothing, Sam. Nothing, okay? So you know the only thing I can do? Is I can work on the car.

[… five years elapse]

SAM: So, what? Try to talk to him again?

DEAN: Sam.

SAM: Dean, all we can do is talk to the guy.

DEAN: He’s not a guy. He’s God. And he’s pissed. And when God gets righteous, you get the hell out of the way; haven’t you read the Bible?

SAM: I guess…

DEAN: Cas is never coming back. He’s lied to us, he used us, he cracked your gourd like it was nothing. No more talk; we have spent enough on him.

SAM: Okay.

DEAN: Hand me that socket wrench.

Dean didn’t lose the car this time, just had Miriam deface it with “Bitch” on the window and the car was washed and shiny in a couple of episodes. But it’s metaphorically a similar process and I guess all they had time for when 13x01 was about taking time in a very different way, by giving Dean like 10 minutes at the end of the episode all about how he was grieving Cas. 

Anyway, I think there’s a lot of thematic overlap in what it means for Dean right now, with Billie’s reminder of his position on the cosmic ladder, to John’s order about Sam, to Dean’s responsibility to deal with Cas and the Leviathans, which eventually crystallises into his mission to kill Dick - and though Dick kills Bobby, finding out who is the head leviathan in 7x09 really just seals the deal of who Dean needs to personally kill to deal with everything, and the Bobby thing was just an extra motivation to fall into a revenge mindset, but it also about what happened with Cas (and when Cas comes back, he has to help kill Dick for the same reason it all happened to him and he was connected to it and responsible). 

We really haven’t seen anything yet, but I think getting Cas back is a temporary fix at least to a bigger issue, which is Dean’s burden of the world, which Chuck lumped on him in 11x23 and made me very, very excited that Dean’s duty to save everyone was hopefully going to get some microscopic treatment and maybe one day some sort of resolution. I don’t think Billie’s comment was a pick me up, and it reminds me of how Cas started picking on Dean on Heaven’s behalf in 4x01 - telling him they had work for him. In 4x02 Dean complains a lot about how he hates being singled out and it’s absolutely horrifying that he was saved for unknown reasons. And those reasons turned out to be being Michael’s vessel and one of the 2 grenade pins needed to be pulled on the planet being destroyed.

(Which we have some handy visuals for and reminders of in the AU world right now :P) 

I’d hope in the long run Chuck’s orders end up being destroyed as much as John’s were, because the parallel is 1 to 1 except bigger scale, and Chuck telling Dean the world has him to protect it literally in God’s own place is an absolutely horrifying unfair burden than broke him in season 5 and can be directly equated to how season 2 broke him when Sam, who was basically his whole world at the time, was lumped on him with the same burden. In the mean time, Billie’s adding to the weight on Dean, although long run she’s neutral, commenting on it rather than ordering, and seems to have some confidence that he has a purpose and will fulfil it, I can see Dean struggling with it in just the same way he took Cas’s comments in 4x01. 

So even if he seems happy to get Cas back, the root problem of his depression, his sense of being worthless, is still truly about how he defines himself as a hunter and the guy who is supposed to save everyone - who will trade himself for a house of random ghosts he feels he LET DOWN by not investigating well enough sooner. Because he has sole responsibility to fix the planet.

The job is killing Dean literally and metaphorically, and the grief of losing all his loved ones as they do it is just an additional awful, awful part of it. Not getting Cas back immediately thanks to Chuck in 13x01 just confirmed how alone Dean is in the world to him, and he directly mentioned the line from 11x23 when reaching out to Chuck… Getting Cas back and Cas returning seemingly on his own steam is going to be a nice turning point, and good for uplifting Dean, but the core problem remains and since 11x23 I’ve been pretty certain that Dean’s endgame is NOT to be a hunter… Billie also now makes me think he has some purpose to fulfil, and ideally, fulfilling it would let him finally get off the cosmic ladder and be who he wants to be without obligation. 

About all I can really speculate about that hopeful endgame would be that Sam seems to be lumped in with Dean on this, but Cas is literally outside the system based on how he got himself back from the Empty without Chuck’s interference, OR except for in thematic “rewards” or dramatic irony from just missing him really hard, Dean didn’t actually bring him back by DOING anything, and Jack, who is also outside the system in some ways, did instead. But that’s all a huge mess right now :P Need more data. 

So anyway, to go back to Dean and Cas next episode? I think they will have a lot to talk about but it has to be immediate character stuff about their actions and desires. They are both really good for each other and going through very similar emotional territory so I hope they get honest and tell each other how they’re doing, but I don’t think they’ll be talking about overcoming anything. I think if it does mirror 8x08 it MAY be a reversal that Dean admits how bad he was doing without Cas, and Cas is still too uncertain about what happened to him or with a link to make it directly about Dean to reciprocate the sentiment… For all the good communication lately I’m not entirely sure if Dean and Cas can absolutely knock down all the walls. 

And I seriously fear dramatic interruptions to their reconciliation just because of the extremely vague episode descriptions we have after 13x06, which seem to  be concealing exactly what happens in that episode… I’m really expecting silly cowboys for like the middle half of the episode, with the first quarter for reconciliation and getting onto the job, and the last quarter or five minutes for shit to completely hit the fan in some way, probably about Jack, and probably involving Cas since he’s specifically not mentioned in the episode descriptions *even though they just got him back*. 

I’m not worried or wanky about this, I’m just bracing myself for the next round of drama and what its subject will be. If Cas is fine and hanging out with the Winchesters still for 2 episodes and it was redacted spoilers for the sake of 13x05′s last 5 minutes that’s awesome :P But it sounds like time to brace yourself not to expect everything to be fluffy or resolved, either with plot stuff, or emotional arcs. We’re only 5 episodes in so the drama needs to keep on happening, and there’s no way Dean and Cas can or should overcome their arcs about their depression when it’s been set up so interestingly, just because they’re hanging out again.

But it WILL make them feel a lot better in the short term. :D I’m really excited for what they WILL say to each other, I just feel like in some ways we’re really starting to put the cart before the horse on identifying what stories are being told and what moments are being offered to tell them, and assuming the stories are over just because something really dramatic happened. I’m seeing it a lot with all sorts of thematic threads, that just because they’re becoming obvious or surface level or have had a really dramatic moment all about them, they’re being wrapped up as we speak. Instead I think it’s got to all be set up for the rest of the season, where this is all important stuff to know, but the real work hasn’t even begun yet :P

[catalogercas]

Nevada

“Dean Winchester processes his emotions at the speed Nevada counts its ballots” 

Spring 2020

Dean can’t process.

It’s too much.

He stares at the wall.

He stares at his hands.

He flips up his phone again, stares at the now black screen, and thinks, maybe, he really should call Sam.

Sam and Jack both need to know what happened.

But he’s not even sure what did happen.

Too many things at once, that’s for damn sure.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445234

One thing he’s certain, unrelently certain, about, is that Cas is gone. Like, gone gone.

He clenches his fists together and throws his head into his hands. He can’t take Cas being gone. Not again. He needs him. He needs him right now to get through the hell they’re all in. They need to wade through it all together. Defeat God. Call it a day.

But Cas...

Damn it, Cas. Damn it all.

He folds his head down further towards his knees and wishes there was a bottle of alcohol within his reach because, damn, does he need some.

He’s pretty sure Cas is gone because...well... because Cas was fucking... in love ...with him?

That couldn’t be right. Could it?

Why the hell would Cas go and do something dumb like be in love with him?

Honestly, what idiot would?

And that idiot being Cas...

He almost laughs, in a semi hysterical way, but Cas’ words fight with his confusion, his despair.

All he can see is Cas’ eyes welling with tears as he tells him how much he loves him. Because that was it, right? A love confession? A confession that Cas basically worships the ground he walks on because of how much he cares, how much he loves.

And that semi hysterical feeling punches him in the gut, because he doesn’t care enough, doesn’t love enough.

Because if he did, Cas would still be there. Right?

If he’d caught up with Cas faster, if he’d realized what Cas was saying ...

He could have...

He’s honestly not sure what he could have done, what difference it would have made.

How he could have stopped The Empty.

Tears steadily flow down his cheek as he lifts his fist and punches it into the floor before drawing back bloodied knuckles.

He stares at the wall again, then the ceiling, then the phone over and over in methodical order.

He wishes deals weren’t out.

He wishes he had Cas’ trenchcoat to hold on to.

He wishes he had a body to think about burning.

Something more concrete than an empty room.

He feels so empty it hurts.

He presses his hand to the bloody handprint on his jacket and whispers, “Damn it, Cas.”

XXX

Summer 2020

The Empty is as vast and dark as Castiel remembered.

He doesn’t understand, though, why he’s awake.

Why would an immortal cosmic being annoyed by his very existence allow him to be awake? A second time?

He calls out to the Empty, and it responds with his face.

“Pity that you’re awake, but, no matter. I’ve learned how to put you back to bed. So, off you go. Your son may try to bring you back, but it won’t work this time.”

Cas sighs and silently thanks Jack for trying.

XXX

Fall 2020

God is dead, finally dead.

Things are not normal, exactly, but Dean knows, at least, that God isn’t pulling his strings. Or Sam’s strings, or Jack’s strings or anyone else’s. Things are as normal as they’re going to get, considering.

They’re not good. They’re definitely not good. There’s a gaping Cas sized hole filling the bunker.

Jack’s been trying to bring him back from The Empty the same way he did the first time, using his god level angel radio, basically since God kicked it, but it’s not working. Hope that it will ever work is draining, and Dean is desperate to find another way to get Cas back, whatever it takes.

That, or to throw himself into every case he can to try to forget about the Cas sized hole that’s not just in the bunker but in his chest.

The hate and anger that Cas told him wasn’t his driving force, well, he’s pretty sure Cas was wrong.

All he wants is to break things until they feel as broken as he does.

XXX

He walks into Sam’s room in early November with a lead on a vampire den only to find that Sam and Jack, of all things, are watching news about the U.S. presidential election.

He’s never felt more removed from, possibly, anything. “You know none of us can vote, right?”

“Well, you definitely can’t. Election day was yesterday. But yeah, we’re all, well...” Sam trails off before turning back to the screen, clearly concerned about setting Dean off. It doesn’t take much these days. Even Dean knows that.

“Dead,” Dean finishes for him, bitterly. “Yeah.”

“Rooney was leading last night, but the states that haven’t reported are too close to call,” Sam says, ignoring the elephant he brought in the room. The glaring reminder that their best friend is still gone.

“Democracy is fascinating,” Jack says, seemingly oblivious, “especially this democracy, Sam’s been telling me how the electoral college works. Rooney could win without winning.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Sam says as Dean wonders why either of them care, about anything, honestly, but especially this.

“Well, as thrilling as this is, I’ve got us a case. Looks like vampires, outside Vegas.”

“Clark County is one of the counties that hasn’t reported,” Jack says.

Dean gives Jack a blank look before he clarifies, “Las Vegas is in Clark County”

“Yeah, great, whatever. Meet me outside in ten.”

XXX

Jack waits for Sam to leave before turning to Sam. “I’m trying it again. Dean needs him back. It fixed him when I brought Cas back before. I’d never seen Dean so happy.”

Sam frowns. They’ve been over this several times already. It’s not working, and it hurts them all to keep trying. “Yeah, well, what about you, Jack? Aren’t you tired of trying? You keep getting your hopes up only to have them dashed all over again. I’m sure that’s hard on you.”

Jack folds his arms across his chest and takes a deep breath. Sam isn’t wrong, but he’s not ready to give up. Not on Cas. Not yet. “I miss him, and I want him back so I’m going to keep trying.”

But it’s not just that. He thinks he’ll probably be seeking the Winchesters’ forgiveness for the rest of time, especially Dean’s. No matter what he does to help them, he’s not sure he’ll ever feel he’s atoned for Mary’s death. No matter how many times they say he’s forgiven.

Bringing Cas back helped Dean so much before, and all he wants to do is help them. Help Dean.

“But, it’s different for me, Sam. Cas was my father, and he knew, or, I hope he knew, that I loved him.”

“He knew,” Sam says.

“But Dean...Dean doesn’t have that. Cas doesn’t know that Dean loves him. I’m not sure Dean knows he loves Cas. But he does, doesn’t he?”

Sam huffs. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve told you before, he does. He just ... Dean’s a little dense about things sometimes.”

“But he needs to tell Cas. That will fix him. I’m sure of it.”

XXX

The drive to Nevada is long. They almost run out of gas before hitting Denver, and after Denver, the cassette deck goes on the fritz.

Dean refuses to let Sam or Jack play music off their phones, so instead he’s stuck listening to an endless and needless update on the current ballot count of several swing states. Pennsylvania, then Georgia, then Nevada, then back to Pennsylvania.

He silently decides to go along with their support of Lucy Hernadez. He tries not to overthink that they’ve mentioned her pro-LGBTQ platform several times. That’s important for the gay people he knows. Charlie. Claire.

His brain traitorously adds Cas to the list, and he grips the steering wheel too hard. They almost veer off the road, and Sam yells at him to watch it.

“Something in the road,” Dean mutters.

Neither Jack nor Sam point out that there’s nothing in sight.

They’re an hour outside of Las Vegas when Sam informs Jack that Georgia flipped blue at the same time as a phone inside in the glove box starts ringing.

Sam opens the glove box and throws five cells on the ground before getting to the one that’s ringing. The caller ID reads Cas and his heart stops.

He immediately pulls off to the side of the road. “Where is he, Sam?”

Sam answers the phone, puts it on speaker, and it immediately goes to dial tone.

“Where is he?”

Sam keeps trying to call back, but there’s no answer.

XXX

Hope and doubt pervades the car.

With no other direction to go, they inch closer to Las Vegas as Jack informs them, with no particular enthusiasm that Pennsylvania had also flipped blue.

Then the impossible happens.

The phone rings again, and the caller ID reads Paradise, NV

The bubble of hope collectively rises, and Sam hits the speaker button.

They wait, and they’re all rewarded with Cas’ gravelly voice crackling in the background. “Hello, Dean? I hope you still have this phone...”

“Yeah, buddy, we read you loud and clear. Are you really in Paradise?”

“Paradise? No, Dean, I was...”

“No, Cas, the city. Paradise, Nevada.”

���Oh, um, I’m not sure. This is a pay phone.”

“We’re coming to get you right now. But we got to know where you are.”

There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. He hears Cas speaking with someone else before he returns. “Yes, I’m unironically in Paradise.”

“We’re not too far. Uh, hang tight?”

XXX

Dean speeds the whole way down the length of the interstate and bangs his horn empathically as he drives through frustratingly slow traffic outside Paradise.

There are crowds of what appear to be protesters holding signs stating, “Count the Votes.”

“Isn’t that just how voting works? What the hell are these morons doing?” Dean asks. “They’re in my way.”

Sam shakes his head. “Apparently that’s not how Rooney thinks.”

“Great. That’s just great. A wannabe dictator is preventing me from getting to Cas.” “Wait, Dean, stop!” Jack shouts from the back. “I see him!”

And Dean sees, to his utter shock, Castiel standing in the middle of the crowd holding a sign covered in rainbows stating “Lucy Hernadez for president!”

He sees them, lowers the sign, and waves, a thin smile lighting up his eyes.

Dean doesn’t even take the keys from the ignition as he practically rolls out of the car and runs to Cas.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t think.

He sprints across the parking lot, shoving multiple people out of his way.

He gets to Cas and wraps his arms around him and before he can even process what he’s doing, his lips are pressed into Cas’ lips. His hands are in Cas’ hair, and he can’t pull himself away.

Cas needs to know.

It wasn’t one sided.

Now that he’s had months and months to think about it, it was really never one sided.

He pulls back and sees the surprise and shock written all over Cas’ face.

“I love you, you goddamn idiot!”

“Dean,” Cas says, and tears are welling in his eyes again, just like they were so many months ago. He leans his forehead against Dean’s and Dean leans into it. “I missed you.”

“Yeah, back at you. Never ever pull that crap again. Making a deal with super angel hell? Come on, Cas. Never again.”

He feels tears running down his own cheeks as they wrap their arms around each other, and Dean’s not sure that either of them plan on letting go.

As they do, the crowd around them starts applauding and cheering, and, at first, Dean thinks it’s for them, and he thinks, maybe, they should have moved away from the protest for this, but then everyone starts cheering,“Nevada’s blue! Nevada’s blue! Nevada’s blue!”

Dean laughs and cheers, because even if it’s not his victory, Cas is, and he’s there anyway. “Well, way to go Lucy Hernadez!”

“Yes,” Cas agrees. “I was speaking to the protesters while I was waiting for you. They gave me this sign. It seems some monsters are political policies.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t hunt those ones,” Dean says.

He looks up to see Jack and Sam walking towards them slowly as both keep looking away awkwardly and then looking back. He waves them forward.

They both wrap Cas in a hug, and, as the revelry goes on around them, for the first time in a long time, they all feel whole.