melancholia

I swear to God, this fucking show makes me feel like I'm trapped in some sort of passive-agressive abusive relationship.

For five whole weeks, Supernatural gives me nothing, insults my intelligence, bores me to tears, ridiculous me in public and shits all over my feelings and then, then, just when I'm finally ready to change the locks on the worthless bastard, he turns up in my living room with candy and flowers and champagne and "I'm sorry, baby, it'll never happen again" and "Please take me back, baby" and stands there looking all fucking sexy and what do I do, stupid twat that I am?

I LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BACK IN.

And the sonofabitch gives me one good roll and says "See ya in two months, toots," and leaves me here with an ashtray full of cigarette butts and dirty sheets and just enough of a taste of what to expect when he gets back that oh, he just fucking knows I'll be sitting right here waiting for him.

PRICK.

Is it January yet? I miss you already, baby! I love you! Call me!

So I'm in school and don't have much time (my laptop crashed at home which had me freaking out - I've been without a computer for a fucking week, guys!) but seriously, this is just...Jensen said, when asked whom Dean and Sam belong to among the writers, that "Sera thinks Sam is hers and Edlund thinks Dean is his" and oh god, that is so true! I'm glad it's true. Edlund writes Dean the best, no question, and Sera does a wonderful Sam (most of the time) and I just...I'm just fangirling Ben Edlund so hard. Love him. :D

(Also, again; school ain't bad at all. It's freaky, but I actually look forward to going. File this under, "...you know your life sucks when...")

Jensen: And they were pleased with it and went home that evening and got a phone call, 'Well, there's this guy Jared Pada...Padasomething and they really are liking him for one of the brothers.' So of course, I look him up online.
Jared: He thought I was hot.
Jensen: This guy is smokin' hot. I cannot play his brother. And then they said they'd like to bring me back into Dean and I was of course very excited.
John Shiban: And the second thing, honestly, is casting and chemistry. And chemistry is something you cannot manufacture. These guys have it and they are so great to write for.

[Jared looks at Jensen and leans in to kiss him, but Jensen points to the audience which breaks into cheers and goes wild]
Jared Padalecki: Worth a try, worth a try.

(Did I mention that I miss John Shiban like crazy? Filled with plot-holes as his episodes were, the feeling and sincerity behind it made them so good. Man, I'd kill for a Everybody Loves a Clown episode in season 4.)

Here are the guys in question:



(No, Jensen is not short: he stands a solid 6'1" tall, it's Jared who's a giant--6'4" here, people! He makes everyone look like midgets.)

Not the slashiest pic I could find, but it always makes me smile like crazy, so. *shrugs*

I mean, you gotta love Supernatural, man. The fandom's three main OTP's are RPS (Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki), Incest (Sam/Dean) and Interspecies/Blasphemy (Dean/Castiel). Before you ask, yes, I adore all three. What's it to you?

I'm staying away from spoilers because they are bad for my health. Bad, I tell you. For my mind and bank account. *cough* (Plus, I've read too many already and don't wanna get my hopes up.)

Bright light erupts from the depths of hell. SAM and DEAN brace themselves for what's to come. CASTIEL and CHUCK arrive, but it's too late! LUCIFER emerges!
Pull back to reveal that Lucifer is the size of a Ken doll.
Sam: This is Lucifer?
Dean: Big overture. Liiittle show.
Lucifer (squeaky voiced): I am the dark lord of nightmares! The bringer of terror! Tremble before me. Fear me!
Chuck: He - he's so cute!
Lucifer: Tremble!
Dean (mocking): Who's a little Lucifer? Come on! Who's a little adversary!
Castiel: Don't taunt the angel of the bottomless pit.
Dean: Why, can he hurt me?
Castiel: No, it's just - tacky.

*sigh* Is it September yet?

Season 4 is over, and I am going to have to wait until September for season 5, which I'm sure will just do wonders for my sanity. The last couple of episodes (well, to be honest, this whole season) have left my mind is such a turmoil that I do not know what to think. I am and always have been a Deangirl, so it doesn't come as such a shock that Sam's "I'm sorry" at the end of Lucifer Rising means shit to me. Throughout this whole season, the rift between the brothers have grown, and I love it. Not in the evil, I-want-Dean-for-myself way, but because it's so believable, so in character, and so painful and, well, I trust Kripke with everything. He has not disappointed me so far.

And now, not only am I a Deangirl, but I am utterly obsessed with Castiel. I proudly admit that I am so in love with Dean/Castiel, and what makes it even better is that I love the characters so much seperately as well (and I have yet to come down from the Dean/Cas kiss I dreamt about last week). Still, though, as much as I love Cas (and hate Anna), I have to admit that I love to hate Uriel and Zachariah. :D

One thing I just have to point out is that I am so sick of others boo-hooing Dean's pain. First Sam back Asylum and Scarecrow, then Sam again (I cannot believe he pushed Dean to talk about Hell just to throw it back in his face), then Zachariah and finally fucking Bobby (seriously, Kripke, Bobby? it was like a cruel parody of the love that is 2.22). And you know what? Sam actually needs to do a metric truckload more than just say he’s sorry next season - it may seem callous, but I want to see him made to pay for what he’s done for the first time in his life. People have been practically lining up to smack Dean for being occasionally depressed and hopeless about spending 40 years in Hell and coming back to find that his brother hates his guts and wishes he was back there. Meanwhile, good old Sam has been screwing a demon, drinking blood, lying, murdering and unleashing Lucifer on the world and no one says a word to him. I want to see a bit of payback for the imbalance. Anyway, this whole season, he only one who never put Dean down like that is Castiel (yeah yeah, I'm grinning like an idiot).

Speaking of Castiel, when I first saw the end of The Rapture and after that When the Levee Breaks, it just broke my heart to see Castiel so cold and dismissive towards Dean. Of course, I realized even then that something had happened in Heaven, and maybe he just couldn't display his loyalty to Dean openly anymore, but it hurt nonetheless. And oh my fucking god, Cas just totally rocked in Lucifer Rising. I don't think I've ever seen him so animated before. Best of all, he didn't join in with Zachariah because of political gain; he clearly did it because of Dean: he wants Dean to be at peace, which he clearly would be in Paradise. There are sooo many Dean/Castiel moments in Lucifer Rising that I didn't know what to do with myself when I first saw them. I'm so glad that Cas finally sided with Dean: banished Zachariah and even holding off a fucking archangel so that Dean could stop Sam (which, sadly, Dean did not succeed with).

Before I go ranting about Sam and the end of this whole season, I just have to comment on Sam's hallunications when he was going through withdrawals in When the Levee Breaks. Alastair, his younger self and Mary/Ruby was like a unholy trinity, and then Dean came along and just laid him bare (I still think John should've been the one doing it, shame they couldn't get a hold of JDM).

Dean's final confrontation with Sam at the end of When the Levee Breaks (which just broke my heart, btw) demonstrated yet again that he's lost trust in his brother. His point in the whole episode, the point that Sam refused even to see, much less concede, was that he couldn't in conscience trust Sam's judgment because he had no way to tell how much of that judgment was Sam's and how much may have been unconsciously, unknowingly influenced by the quantity of demon blood he'd drunk. It had nothing to do with judging Sam and everything to do with not putting the world's car keys into the hands of a seemingly lucid potential drunk who wouldn't and couldn't realize how affected and impaired he was - right up until Sam insisted that, contrary to Dean's belief, he did know exactly what he was doing, and intended to do it. That made it immeasurably worse, because he was telling Dean he was speaking, not the blood, and he needed Ruby and didn't need Dean. He wanted Dean, but he needed Ruby; that meant a demon was more important than his brother. They don't need you; not like you need them. Azazel's shot had hit Dean straight in the heart in Devil's Trap; Sam's words hammered that bolt home.

Returning *cough* to Dean and Cas...seriously, could Castiel be any more in love with him? "We have been through much together," Cas tells him, but is so on the fence and he needs Dean's words to knock him off. I actually MISSED THAT PART WTF because my brother chose that moment to walk in and bug me. Am I pissed? Yes. Will I rewatch that scene endlessly, picking it apart for nuance? Why, yes. Yes, I will. Why do you ask such things? And that look Dean gave him when he told Chuck, "yeah, well, we're making it up as we go," like Cas has finally realized he and his loyalty - his belief in God, and even (faltering as it is, what happened to 4.07, Kripke?) his belief in the goodness of God's creation - have been used to yank him around, to destroy what he was sworn to protect...that, my friends, was awesome, Dean realizing that finally he has a committed ally. And did you see him getting ready to hold off a fucking archangel? I MEAN, DID YOU? COME ON, HOW IS THAT NOT LOVE? What was fucking freaky, though, is that after having watched When the Levee Breaks I wrote a little AUish something (copied and pasted it below) and when Cas cut himself with Ruby's knife I was like OMG it's coming true!! It wasn't, of course, but if it had I would've proclaimed myself the next Chuck the Prophet. ^_^

As for the ending of Lucifer Rising, I think it was genius. I knew Ruby was evil all along, and her gloating was just so in character, especially for a double agent who had all the demons out for her blood. And Sam tries to blame it all on her, every little bad choice he made by saying it was all in the demon blood she "fed" him, how it was poison, but then Ruby (and fuck if I don't love her here) says that the blood has nothing to do with it: it was Sam and his choices. She just provided the options and he chose the right path every single time. So when Dean finally kills her and you can see Lucifer rising and Sam just turns to look at his brother and says "I'm sorry", I laughed. He acted like a little brother for the first time this whole season and he thinks an apology will undo raising fucking Lucifer and treating his brother like shit? Color me incredulous.

As for the things that sucks in this ep: Bobby is that petty and vindictive and apparently doesn't understand Dean or know the first thing about his history? Sam suddenly grows a conscience because it took him a year to remember that the demons are hosted by human bodies? Azazel's epic end game was that generic? Blah.

Anyway. I'm not sure they can fix this. I have no doubt Kripke will try, but considering the show's rocky history with emotional fall-outs (seriously, 4.17 following 4.16, and let's not forget 2.15 following 2.14, oh and 1.17 following 1.16), I'm not holding my breath. Cause, you know, since Dean couldn't still be in Hell, Sam has very kindly brought Hell to earth for him. What a thoughtful brother he is.

And this is what I want for season 5: Sam apologizing to Dean without hearing Dean's apology first; Bobby apologizing do Dean for being an ass, but mostly, I'd love for Dean to just realize that he really is the better man between the three. Then I want Dean and Cas to have a heart to heart and more eye-fucking. *_*

And that was my two cents of the day.

Sam, Castiel sighs, still staring down into the cup. Oddly, Dean's relieved Cas isn't paying attention to him; he doesn't know yet if he can do what he's already agreed to do.

Sam. They're coming to the end of it, to a choice Dean's pretty sure Sam's made already. There's no way for Dean to stop him, not Hell-broken as he is, no way for Cas to do it short of killing him. They know now how Sam's been working his bit of the Dark Side, how it's that Sith-bitch Ruby doing it to him.

"This war..." Castiel presses the blade to his forearm once more, tone thick with regret, thick as the blood that wells, shot with gold from the lamps and silver with Cas's grace, from the cut. "On my own, I'm not enough to help you. I can't save you and save my garrison from its own destruction; I can't outmatch the forces against us, not on my own. I am not adequate to the work anymore." And it's not just work, Dean registers mission-keepSammysafe-yourexistenceISthistask, how Dean has suddenly, inexplicably, become more important than the garrison, than Eden, than Cas's orders simply to keep an eye on a servant of God who doesn't like his servitude.

"You can take this up as you would take up any other weapon." Castiel doesn't bother with the band-aid Dean had offered to get from the first-aid kit, and his blood drips slowly down his arm even as the wound heals. It twines around his wrist and falls to the floor; Dean wonders if they're walking on holy ground now. "I know you agreed, but..."

He looks at Dean, looks, with the same eyes that saw him in Hell, and the same eyes that see his dreams, and his sins, and his failures, and every shortcoming.

"I would not force you to take it," Cas adds after a moment, voice small, diminished under the weight of light, shadow, and too many eons of knowing.

"I'll take it," Dean says, and feels calm with the inevitability.

Castiel dips two fingers into the cup - the freaking plastic cup - and presses them to Dean's forehead. And Dean can't say if it's Castiel touching him, or the blood, or the insanity of what he's doing, but energy rushes through him, a shiver of light that starts out like ice and finishes off with the slow burn of whiskey. As he stands there, Castiel lifts the cup in both hands, as though lifting a chalice, fingers cupping it delicately. Durable, Dean remembers, and remembers thinking it had been a weird word to apply to a slender, wiry body and blue eyes as wide and searching as that.

The plastic rim bumps at his lips and Dean inhales: copper, heat, a smell he can't name except it lives way back in his head, in the place where he thinks of Cas and foreign words like rest.

"I don't..." He pushes the cup aside. "Not like this."

Ignoring Castiel's soft sound of surprise, Dean takes the cup and sets it in the table. He picks up the knife, smooth sickle-shaped steel, and sets it to the curve of Castiel's inner arm. The blade is wickedly fine and draws blood with the barest pressure. Cas's face is unreadable despite the fierce light in his eyes.

"This way," Dean whispers, and bends to lick across warm and bloody skin.

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.

He doesn't remember getting here, doesn't remember anything but heat and dark and suffocation. Then the blinding pain of metal going through flesh and muscle and bone, and the weight of his own body making the hooks rip out of his skin.

He spends four days alone, screaming for a god he never believed in before this, suspended above endless nothing below endless nothing. He feels blood run in slick droplets to the small of his back, pooling, dripping away. A few seconds later they land on his stomach again, returned to him.

On the fifth day a wire jiggles, like there's something on it, far beyond his range of vision. He can feel the vibrations through his humerus to his spine, and he shuts up.

From then on, a wire moves occasionally, twitches like something's moving across it. Never the same one twice, and never for long. It's a spider, his mind says, a frantic tinge to the thought that makes the muscles in his back spasm in panic. A spider coming for a fly. So he lies still as he can, not moving except for the shivering, even as the meat hooks slide deeper into his flesh.

Doesn't matter in the end, though. The spider comes anyway.

-

"Fuck you," he says every day. "Fuck you and die."

Alastair just chuckles and lets the demons go back to stripping his bones clean.

Your father lasted three days, Alastair smiles. Three days and he begged us for someone to flay alive. Would've done it to you if we'd asked.

"Fuck you," he says.

See that man over there, Dean? Alastair says sometimes. When he was alive, he raped and killed eight little boys. Left their bodies in dumpsters all around Philly. All we want you to do is give him what he's got coming.

"Fuck you" is all he says.

The days turn into months, the months into years. Sometimes they draw pictures in his skin with knives. Sometimes they eat pieces of him raw. Sometimes they tilt his head back and stick a length of metal down his throat, notching how far they get it in before they rupture something in his guts.

Every day, at the changing of the shifts (it never stops, no, not for him-he just gets new torturers every so often), Alastair comes to him with the same offer.

Dean, Alastair whispers, sliding a hand up his throat until a single nail gouges the skin under his chin. I know you want to come off of that rack. Everybody wants to come off of that rack.

"Fuck you," he says, but there's no venom in it. He doesn't think he remembers what it's like to not be exhausted, to not be in pain. He feels old.

Dean, Alastair whispers again, fingers pressing into the back of his neck, pinching the muscles there until he can't see straight. Dean, how do you think your father got out of hell? Do you think he somehow broke free of his restraints?

Oh, darling, he says, smooth and sweet like he's picking someone up in a bar. Oh, sweetheart, don't you wanna come off that rack? Don't you wanna get comfortable again?

"Fuck you," she whispers, her voice an echo of something he doesn't quite remember now.

If you insist is his response and help him if he doesn't love to hear her scream. It hurts, he makes sure it does, and she shrieks like a little girl. And when she doesn't scream any more he takes one of her small white hands (only it's red now, red with her blood and red with his, where she'd clawed at him, trying to get him out, get him off, begging for god to make him stop) and he starts to bite. He can feel the delicate bones of her fingers shatter as he grinds his teeth together, and then she starts screaming again.

-

It's not comfortable, not by any means. He still hates this place, still wants to be anywhere else. He'd do anything to be anywhere else. But now? Now he's not the one strapped down.

Say what you will of morals-that's an improvement.

-

He's slicing thin strips from a man's chest and making him eat them when he hears the commotion. It's a shrieking, like a million voices rising as one, and he sees light descending. It's the sort of light that makes him screw together his eyelids and hide his face. But it's getting brighter and closer and the single voice of rage and terror rising from all sides around him intensifies until he's shrieking too.

Then there's pain, a horrible flashing burning pain in his shoulder, and his screech turns into a snarl as he tries to fight back. He swore he'd never feel pain again, never, and it hurts oh god it hurts.

And then he's going up and up and up until he can't breathe any more.

-

He knows it's not hell because he feels like his whole body's wrapped in gauze, soft and safe and healed.

That wasn't me, some small voice says as he walks along a dust road, tasting dry earth on the roof of his mouth. That wasn't me.

And the longer he's topside, the more he believes it. He chooses to forget peeling the skin back from a teenage boy's face, leaving nothing but wet and glistening muscle behind. He chooses to forget popping a woman's eyeball out with his thumb, crunching it until the juices flowed down her chin while she watched with her good one. He chooses to forget the countless people whose bodies he'd defiled in every horrible, painful, crushing way he could imagine.

He's always been good at repressing. By the time he finds Sam, he's starting to see people as people and not as playthings anymore. By the time they go on their first case after he gets back, he can smile at a waitress without imagining her intestines all over the floor. By the time they meet Anna, he can look at Castiel and almost forget vile little thing.

Almost.

Because when he fucks her, trying so hard to be gentle, it's all he can do not to crush the bones in those thin white fingers between his teeth. Angel, huh? He wants to hear her squeal.

Never going back, the voice in his head says. Never.