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dyed-red · 1 year

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(1/2) May I please vent for a moment? I have a lot of very Sam feels lately, and I never really see much about this so maybe my POV is skewed. I rewatched the episode Unity (15.17), One of the points in the episode is that if Jack kills Chuck right then, everyone who has died and been brought back to life will be dead again. Dean says he doesn't care, let them all die. Sam asks "Even me?" and Dean doesn't answer, just repeats that Chuck must die. To me this is one of the most heartbreaking

2/2) scenes because we have 15 years of Dean doing anything to save Sam, even when Sam didn't want to be saved, and now when Sam has is good with their relationship and their definition of family and how they live their lives is when Dean doesn't care? Maybe it's just me but the look on Sam's face at that moment was absolutely devastated. Dean, now is when you don't put your brother and your relationship before everything??? Is it just me? OK, it's just me. Sorry for the long rant.

Oh darling you are always welcome to vent for any moments, especially with feels.

First off, that scene is fucking incredible. There is SO MUCH emotion in it. Devastating. And it's a sign of how good it is and how much emotion they brought to it that it has affected you so deeply, so bear that in mind.

But, because I abso-fucking-lutely love that scene and you gave me a perfect opportunity to geek out in way too much detail about it, let's take an extended look.

Dean is so angry. He hates Chuck. Hates him like he's hated possibly no one ever. I'm not sure he hates Lucifer as much as he hates Chuck, and that is truly saying something.

In the case of Lucifer, of literally anyone and anything else, even universe-ending threats like Amara, the priority was saving people, not killing the monster. Whatever was necessary, but not no matter the cost. The cost was born to save as many as could be (and later, to keep Sam as safe as could be). The ultimate was not death in and of itself, the point was salvation.

That's no longer the case here. The point is killing Chuck. Literally no matter the collateral damage, no matter the cost. This is a new level of desperation that we've never seen from Dean before, a new level of hatred.

(And it's coming from a place of intense powerlessness and violation, but more on that in a sec).

And right after Dean lays bare how truly deep that hatred runs, Sam asks that incredible, devastating, shocking line in response:

And Dean may not immediately have words at the ready, but his expression isn't a dismissal. He looks shocked that Sam could even ask, mouth forms an attempt at a scoff or denial or - or something. Something that, to me, clearly communicates 'no'. He looks hurt by Sam's question (which is important for contextualizing his next lines).

But interestingly enough, the scene cuts from there to Chuck and Amara, and the next spoken word is "Balance."

Chuck and Amara are siblings, and there is a parallel and foil happening between them versus Sam and Dean here, as there has been all season. Chuck absorbs Amara and subjugates her. He is still his toxic self, who wants all of the control and all of the power and is willing to destroy his sister, the only being in the entire universe who could be his equal, the only being in the entire multiverse and all creation who might be able to truly understand him.

And for what? Extra power? Maybe.

But maybe that's just what abusive people do -- they tear down your walls and take all of you, whatever they can get, and use and unmake you and destroy you, if given the opportunity. They remake you into their image, into what they want from you, so that you aren't allowed to exist with your own wants separate to what they want, and what they want for you.

That's what Chuck has just done with/to Amara. And there is no "balance" (no equality) to it.

Then we jump right back to Sam and Dean.

And I think you're reading that first line of Dean's as dismissing what Sam has just asked. Sam says "what about me?" and you said that Dean doesn't answer. And you're right, to a point, because hurt expression notwithstanding, he doesn't outright reply to Sam's explicit question.

But I'm not sure that that means he doesn't answer. Because you're also correct that Dean repeats, hurtles onward that Chuck has to die, that this has to happen. But I don't personally read it as a dismissal, and I do read it as Dean answering Sam's question, but maybe not in the way you think.

I read it as Dean protesting. I read it as him begging.

So let's go back over his reply one more time, with a close, if forgiving, reading:

Chuck has to die.

Dean's sentence is declarative, a statement of fact. It is necessary for Chuck to die. This is a need, a requirement.

He has to!

With the exclamation, the rise in his voice, and the repetition of the sentiment of the previous sentence (has to die), the declarative becomes more emotionally charged. It's not just that it is necessary for Chuck to die, it is necessary to Dean that Chuck die.

The emotion and repetition also make it clear, unlike a declarative, that this is not a certainty. "Earl had to die" is a calm declarative, a statement of necessity. Dean's emotional and repeated delivery moves this away from a statement, away from an agreed-upon certainty, and into something else. So what is it then, and where does he go next?

Otherwise he'll keep us tap dancing forever

Here, on the surface, Dean is providing reasons to back up his point that Chuck has to die. He's providing a counterfactual argument, what will happen if they don't kill Chuck, which is that they will never be free.

Looking deeper, Dean has shifted from the statement of Chuck's death as a necessity to a direct acknowledgement here that his death is not a certainty, by providing the "otherwise" case that acknowledges the potential for Chuck's continued survival.

Dean is also shifting the language over to 'us'. He's bringing Sam into this counterfactual argument. In doing so, it becomes clear that he is attempting to reason with Sam, to appeal to the consequences to Sam and to something that Sam (in Dean's eyes, at least, or else framing this argument this way would be pointless) should care about too.

and I can't live like that, man! I can't live like that!

Dean's words are now belying his desperation here. Not only has he acknowledged the possibility of Chuck not dying and the rational consequence he sees from that, but he is acknowledging the emotional consequence that will have for him, personally. This is something he cannot do. In repeating it, yelling it, he makes it a hard line of his. It is an impossibility, not an option. This is not tenable, to continue to live under Chuck, and for that reason, Chuck must die.

His logic has been laid out, now. He is asking Sam to join him in fighting Chuck, whose death Dean believes is necessary in order for them both (us) to live in an acceptable manner, otherwise he (Dean) cannot continue to live at all.

I won't!

Except, finally, acknowledgment that even that, even Dean's inability to live under Chuck, is not a material reality. Not a statement of cannot/is not, but rather it's a personal imperative. Won't, not can't. I choose not to. I refuse.

This couches his preceding sentences his a new light. This is his personal refusal, his personal feelings. Not a cold and rational reality or something which cannot be. It's not a foregone statement or necessity that Chuck die, it's Dean's need. His request.

And in the grander scheme of the emotion, the counterfactual of what it would mean to live under Chuck, the repeated necessity (repeated uncertainty) of Chuck dying, it lays bare that this is a plea. That Dean is begging his brother to join him in this. To stand by his side so that it is not trading Sam versus Chuck, but him and Sam standing together against Chuck and everything else in existence.

So, I read it as an implicit reply to Sam's question. "No, I would not trade you. Instead I'm demanding, no I am begging, that you stand by me so that we together can trade the rest of them. Because I refuse to live in this type of pain, and I hope this pain, these horrible consequences, are enough argument to convince you to join me."

Let's go back to that Chuck and Amara scene for a sec.

Their scene and Sam and Dean's are interspersed and keep cutting back and forth. Chuck is convincing Amara to carry out his plan, using words instead of violence, but doing so in a way that is manipulative, and for a decidedly selfish end. He wants to control and subsume her. That's the toxic and abusive outcome, with Chuck completely dominating and destroying his sister. His means aren't violent, but his desired ends absolutely are.

Meaning, the stand-off between Sam and Dean starts with violence. Dean, in his own right mind and not possessed or demonic or under any external influence, pulls a gun on Sam.

Sam is horrified, devastated. He immediately realizes the severity of how extreme this must be, for Dean to do this, something he's never done before, something that is in so many ways completely antithetical to who Dean is.

There is an altercation. Sam knocks the gun aside. Dean punches Sam. Dean's means are violent. The older brother, trying to convince and control his younger sibling to carry out his plan.

But Sam fights back.

Sam tells, demands that Dean listen. They argue.

THEY ARGUE.

Sam is not Amara. Rather than let himself be subsumed, he meets his brother where he is at, with violence, and holds him back. He meets Dean as an equal. And he outright demands with his body and with his words that Dean listen to him.

And Dean is not Chuck. Rather than wanting to control, subsume, or destroy Sam, Dean loves Sam as an equal. He loves Sam, period. His means are violent, but his ends, at least where Sam is concerned, are not, and have never been.

So when Sam demands Dean listen, Dean does. And that's when Dean begins to protest and plead.

But Sam continues to stand firm on his side, on what he knows is right. On what he learned from watching Dean -- about choices, about autonomy, about hope.

From the moment that Sam reminds Dean that they always have a choice, Dean has lost. The argument is over, and where Chuck and Amara have turned into something monstrous through their toxic consumption of one another, Sam and Dean have chosen a different path.

To be honest, Dean starts to lose even possibly before Sam reminds him of choices (of free will, the longest-standing theme of the entire show). It begins from the moment Dean turns his attention from urging Cas and Jack onward to acknowledging what Sam is saying, even if only to argue with it. The rest of it is his slow and aggrieved, desperate surrender. His pleas to Sam. Sam's pleas in return to him, which Dean allows (foregone by this point) to win him over.

From the moment Dean let Sam knock the gun aside, the rest of it is just the five stages of grief.

Denial: we don't have a choice. there's nothing else we can do.

Bargaining: I'd trade it all.

Anger: chuck has to die. he has to.

Depression: i can't live like that.

Acceptance:

So... while a dizzying and almost-ruinous moment that we get from Dean, I do have to disagree, nonnie. I don't think think that this moment is showing us that Dean doesn't care. I think it's showing us that he cares so much.

So much that he already knew he lost. That he was desperate and grieving and sad and doomed, so incredibly doomed, so that when Sam said "what about me?" Dean's reply wasn't a dismissal -- it was him begging his brother to understand, to sit with grace in the depth of Dean's despair. To join him.

And instead of letting Dean drag him into the same place of hopelessness, of helplessness, Sam does what they have always done for each other. He reaches his hand into the muck and grabs Dean's from where it is buried under so many layers of hurt, and he pulls him up again. He keeps his brother human.

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