k-vichan:

charlie-minion:

I was just
scrolling down my dashboard as usual when I came upon this post by @adoringjensen.
The moment I saw it, I couldn’t help remembering season 7 and all the pain Dean
went through. That’s probably why I decided to write this post about Dean’s
mental state in season 7.

Dean is
allergic to feelings. He always tries to hide what he feels and what makes him
vulnerable. In season 7, since Cas turned into Godstiel, Dean wasn’t OK. He
felt helpless. The only thing he could do was to work on baby, fix the car…
that’s what he could do. He said that
in 7×01. A huge part of the episode showed us Dean working on the car while
listening to reports of what Cas was doing as god. Dean was so hurt. In fact, there was a moment when he told Sam:

“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.”

That was the
episode where Dean started drinking. I laugh every time I remember that some
people have said Dean’s drinking was caused by Bobby’s death. There’s nothing
worse than someone who doesn’t want to see what’s right in front of them.

In 7×01, Bobby
was still very much alive. There were two things that made Dean start drinking:
Sam’s hallucinations and Cas’ betrayal.  Dean’s drinking might have just gotten worse after
Bobby’s death, but it all started in 7×01. We saw it when Sam found Dean
drinking and told him:

“You want some coffee with that?”

What was
Dean’s answer? “It’s 6:00 p.m. somewhere.”

It was
probably early in the morning and Dean was already drinking. That wasn’t Dean’s
typical behavior because if it had been, Sam wouldn’t have noticed the
difference and said something about it. In fact, Sam knew that Cas’ betrayal
had affected Dean more than anything. That’s why when Dean asked him why he
lied about the hallucinations, Sam said:

“You got a lot of pretty severe crap swinging
your way lately, and – and I thought –what? I thought why burst the one good
bubble you had left?”

What was the
severe crap swinging Dean’s way lately? The only thing that had happened was
related to Cas. We know that Cas was godstiel not for just a couple of days.
Dean fixed the Impala and I don’t think he would have managed to do it in one
or two days. Sam had seen Dean working on the car for days. Sam knew his
brother so well that he understood his mood was affected by the “severe crap”
happening to him. That’s why he didn’t want to tell him about the
hallucinations to avoid making things even worse.

Poor Dean
was hitting rock bottom. He even told Sam:

“You know
how I’m gonna deal? I’m gonna stuff my piehole, I’m gonna drink, and I’m gonna
watch some Asian cartoon porn and act like the world’s about to explode because
it is.”

It was Sam the
one who reached to Cas. Dean had already lost hope; he thought Cas was gone. However,
when Cas showed up and asked for help, when he was trying to make amends and
show regret, when he almost died, Dean still worried about him. Dean still
called his name and thought that “maybe angels don’t need to breathe.”

When Cas
woke up and told Dean he would find some way to redeem himself, Dean didn’t
tell him that wasn’t possible. He just said, “All right, well, one thing at a time. Come on. Let’s get you out of
here. Come on.” Despite the hurt and the pain, Dean was willing to give Cas
another chance.

When the
Leviathans took control over Cas, it kills me to remember that Cas had told
Dean and Bobby to run. Dean asked Bobby to run and get Sam, but he didn’t try
to leave. He wanted to stay and see if he could help Cas, though it was too
late at that point.

Don’t even
get me started on 7×02. That episode was almost the death of me. The moment
Dean saw Cas get into that river, the moment he took Cas’ trench coat out of
the river and said “So he’s gone” and then folded the coat and decided to keep
it. He decided to keep something that belonged to someone who had lied to him and hurt his brother.
WHY?

Bobby knew
Dean was not OK. That’s why he was trying to get Dean to talk about how he
felt, but Dean kept saying he was fine. Bobby didn’t buy that crap, though. Notice what was number 1 in Bobby’s list of what he thought was troubling Dean:

“Of course. Yeah. You just lost one of the best
friends you ever had, your brother’s in the bell jar, and Purgatory’s most
wanted are surfing the sewer lines, but yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re – you’re
fine.”

Time passed
by and Dean was still very much affected by what happened to Cas. If you
remember episode 7×05, Dean was having nightmares. But what was the first thing he saw? Cas going into that river!! He
also dreamt about Sam’s hallucinations and killing Sam’s monster-friend Amy
(which was simply Dean’s subconscious saying that he couldn’t trust anything
that wasn’t human… though it’s interesting that he didn’t try to kill Cas in
7×17 when he returned despite Cas having killed so many people; in
fact, he even defended Cas when he felt regret for the death toll he had caused
in heaven and on earth).

Dean was not
OK during the whole season, but he didn’t want to talk about it because that’s
what he always does. Denial. But now that I finally get to talk about episode 7×09, it’s
remarkable that Dean finally said what was bothering him because he was drugged. He
admitted that what had been making him feel terrible was what happened with/to
Cas. He didn’t mention Sam’s hallucinations, and Bobby was still alive. But Dean
said:

“I’m fine! I – I actually feel great. The best
I’ve felt in a couple months. Cas? Black goo? I don’t even care anymore. And
you know what’s even better? I don’t care that I don’t care. I just want my
damn slammer back.”

Poor Dean.
Both Sam and Bobby knew that Dean wasn’t OK. That’s why they even discussed it
before Bobby’s death.

Sam: So,
you think he’s okay? Bobby: Yeah, he’s all right. Sam: Good. So you don’t worry
about him?

Bobby: What
do you mean? Before the Turducken?

Sam: Yeah.
Yeah, I kind of mean more like, uh… more like ever since my head broke… and
we lost Cas. I mean, you ever feel like he’s – he’s going through the same
motions but he’s not the same Dean, you know?

So Dean
himself told us that he wasn’t OK because of Cas. But why was that? We got the
answer thanks to Ben Edlund’s amazing subtext in 7×15.

Jeffrey was
a Dean parallel and his connection with his demon was a parallel to Dean’s
connection with Cas. So what do you think it meant when Jeffrey said this?  

“I just
started to drink and drift, and I got lost. Had some kind of mental break.”

First we
thought he was talking about surviving being possessed, but it wasn’t
like that because later Jeffrey explained:

“Did you
ever think that maybe I loved being possessed? Did you? I loved the connection,
the power. And I loved him. Love of my
life, actually. I was nothing before he found me – a shadow too scared to
do what I was brought here to do. Too timid to live up to my true potential. […]
He’s the one who saved me. And you sent him to Hell.”

Jeffrey
even tried to explain Dean further:

“I watched you
torture an innocent man to get out a demon. Pretty charged situation…
revealing. You guys talked about a lot, showed a lot of character. God… you
were so desperate to fix the world back then. It kills you… that people keep
getting hurt… and you just can’t stop it. Or I should say… it’s killed you,
shouldn’t I? […] Hey. I was there. I was
depressed, Dean, because he was gone. I was a wreck, an emotional shell, a
drunk. I was suicidal. […] I realized I was nothing without my demon. Then
I decided I have to get him back.”

Please, for
god’s sake tell me how is it even possible for someone not to see the
parallels? What did Dean decide in 7×17 (two episodes later) when Cas came
back? He decided that he had to get his angel back, so he gave him back his
trench coat –the one that Dean had kept, no matter how many times they had to
change cars that year. Why didn’t he just leave the trench coat in the Impala?
Nope, Dean was carrying Cas’ trench coat everywhere because Cas was gone and Dean was depressed; he was
a wreck, an emotional shell, a drunk.

As Dean
himself said in 7×17 when talking to Emmanuel about Cas:

“Honestly,
I-I-I don’t know if he is dead. I just know that this… whole thing couldn’t
be messier. You know, I used to be able to just shake this stuff off. You know,
whatever it was. It might take me some time, but… I always could. What Cas
did… I just can’t – I don’t know why.”

Dean is a
very complex character. He was suffering because he had lost the love of his
life, but until that point, he hadn’t understood it yet. That’s why my headcanon
is that he finally began to understand it when he was in Purgatory, when he
decided that leaving Purgatory without Cas wasn’t worth the pain, when he made
it his mission to get his angel back, just as Jeffrey did with his demon.

So… yeah.
Sorry for all this rumbling. I just get very emotional every time I think about
season 7 and Dean’s love for Cas.

Yesss, I love all of
this. Especially the call out to “Repo Man,” which was SUCH a
Dean/Cas episode for not having mentioned Cas even once.

The only thing I’ll
add to this is that I think at least a bit of the “severe crap”
that Sam was referring to had to be related to Lisa and Ben. They
represented the normal life that Dean just couldn’t be a part of, and
the decision Dean made to completely remove himself from their lives
– and more specifically HOW he was removing himself – was really
morally questionable. Sam started to call him out on it, but stopped…
and he didn’t stop when Dean threatened to break his nose; he stopped
when he saw the tears in Dean’s eyes.

But even with that
it’s still incredibly easy to reconcile everything said here, because
Dean’s eyes started shining when he was thanking Cas
for healing Lisa, which Cas had done without Dean asking. But then
Dean put Castiel’s “I do everything that you ask” statement to
the test by asking Cas to remove himself from Lisa and Ben’s
memories. Cas confirms to Dean that yes, he really does do everything
that Dean asks, he does always come when Dean calls, and he is Dean’s
friend. 

Which just makes everything that follows even more severe and more crappy. ❤