dean and cas pining in the carver seasons
Dec. 7th, 2014 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyAnd as long as Dean was dealing with the Ezekiel/Gadreel-in-Sam situation, having Cas back was not an option (though, again, the show made a point of saying Dean wished things were different – “No one wants Cas here more than I do” 9x04). Then, once Gadreel has been expelled, Dean was immediately thrust into the Mark storyline, which is basically a physical manifestation of Dean’s own self-loathing, meanwhile, Cas was unlikely to try to push to stay again, since he was kicked out once already, so he was back to trying to save his angel family – the whole duty vs desire thing that we’ve had in play.
But we still kept having, in those late seasons episodes, much evidence that Cas was special to Dean (and that Dean is special to Cas) – ex. when Cas is in danger from Metatron in “Meta Fiction”, one of the concerns people had before the episode was that the Mark would make Dean less concerned about Cas being in danger, but that ended up not being the case at all. Sam mentioning Cas to Dean helped pull Dean out of his little bundle of self-hate on the floor. And, of course, 9x22/9x23 is that moment where their stories did get to collide for longer and, out of it, we got Dean being dictatorial to Sam and then immediately (like, turn the corner immediate) softening around Cas and agreeing with the idea that the three of them are enough (“we always have been”). We got Metatron basically fridging Dean in order to hurt Cas and then taunting Cas over the fact that he’d killed Dean. Metatron has never given much of a shit about the Winchesters, yet he deliberately lured Dean to him so that he could stab him and then wave the bloody blade in Cas’s face.
And then S10… hoo, boy. We’ve been mirroring the two characters so much this season that it’s actually kinda hilarious. And our introduction to Cas this season was him lying in bed, pining away over Dean’s death and desperately hoping Sam has brought him news that Dean is still alive – when that happened, I immediately found that moment comparable to (The Vampire Diaries, also on the CW) Elena’s similar phone call to the brother (Stefan) of the love of her life (Damon), also believed to be dead, and I saw Elena in a similar state of despair and asking Stefan to please give her some hope that Damon could still be alive.
But both Cas and Dean still believe they’re obligated by their duties, and Cas has never gotten over being kicked out by Dean, and Dean doesn’t believe Cas would ever stay anyway (not as an angel), so everything is tragic and sad. We had lil!Cas’s pining song in 10x05, to remind us that Cas is pining away for Dean. And then, in 10x07, they were again mirrored extensively. But, yes, they do both believe that anything between them is impossible and they have both given up, so they aren’t fighting for it. Dean knows Cas loves him, but Cas never stays because the angels are more important; Cas knows Dean cares, but that Sam is more important. Duty over desire.
They believe being together is both impossible and also pointless (since they are both laboring under their respective death sentences), so they just each do their best to be happy in the moments they get to have as friends. It makes me want to throw things at my TV screen and yell at them to just smoosh faces already, but that’s a familiar feeling I’ve had with many a pairing that has eventually gone canon, too.
Original Post: dean and cas pining ask