melancholia

He is older than his father, taller and broader. Dad seems so young. It's just wrong, Dad being innocent and Mom being a hunter-his worldview is completely tossed upside down. Dad's got no clue what's out there, and Mom... she's not the angel he's always pictured, remembered her as. She's just a girl, rebelling against her parents, wanting out of the life. She's Sam, ten years before Sammy even exists.

They're so young. He towers over Dad, practically, and he could break Mom in half. He knows more than both of them put together-Mom may've been hunting from the cradle (and Grandpa sure is one scary bastard), but she's barely eighteen. She's a kid. Dad's been to war and come back, but he's still just a boy. He's still shy and awkward, stumbling through a courtship with the woman he'd spent over twenty years getting vengeance for.

Dean can't catch his breath. His parents, his grandparents, Azazel-all twisted together, blood and even more fucking deals with fucking evil. Even going thirty-six years into the past, to back before November, isn't enough to escape. Azazel's there, fucking with his family, killing his family... Dean's hands itch for the demon-killing Colt, the shining blade. He's the one that killed Azazel, Mom and Dad's murderer, and now his grandparent's killer, too. He's the one that got Sam killed, which made him responsible for Dean's deal-and he killed Dad twice over. He killed Dad to get Mom's deal, and he killed Dad as part of Dad's debt for Dean's life, and Dean wants to strangle the fucker with his bare hands, to rend him and tear him. Dean learned a lot in Hell, and he really really wants to put it to use almost-forty years in the past but Castiel's hand is warm on his shoulder and he's waking up in now.

He didn't change a thing except for the worse.

Dad was so young, so naïve, so hopeful. Mom saw a way out, a way into the life Sam still dreams about sometimes, the life none of them ever seem able to have.

"Why did you even send me back?" he demands. He wants to hurt Castiel like he hurts now, wants to make the angel cry-if angels can cry. He never played with an angel in Hell. Demons can sob oceans, if twisted the right way, and he found hundreds.

Castiel has no meaningful answer. His eyes are sad, unfathomably deep, with knowledge Dean will never be able to grasp. His eyes are holy, God's light shining out of the human vessel-a man who prayed for this. Does he regret it now?

The angel offers platitudes, the words with slightly wrong inflections, and Dean's anger just keeps spiraling. He gets so angry with no reason, and he can't lash out at Sam. Not at Sammy.

"If you don't stop him," Castiel says gently, "we will."

Dean misses the clarity of Hell. Life was so much easier there.

---

In the Beginning  was another episode that drove me insane. It began with sacrifice and blood and fire. It's only right it ends the same.