Buried Ghosts and Bitter Truths

“I can’t look at him – I can’t look at Jack because when I do, I don’t just see Cas. I see her.” Sam looks a couple inches closer to walking out. Like a fog has cleared and the weight of expectation has been lifted off his shoulders. Like he’s given up.His voice is as light as it is sharp, “A girl, Dean? You’re actually going to try and make this about a girl?”Shame fills Dean’s lungs until his ears ring and he chokes on the weight of the words clawing their way up his throat. He’s going under, attempting to hold back a tsunami with a bucket while his little brother watches with an indifference more painful than his derision. When he speaks, Dean pitches his voice low in an attempt to disguise the raw edge it has taken on, as if the name had been physically torn from him, entirely unbidden.“Emma.”OrBetween 13.04 The Big Empty and 13.05 Advanced Thanatology. Four thousand canon compliant words of Dean Winchester having a breakdown over his total inability to reconcile the fact that the half-human son of Satan himself is just a little boy who needs saving, with the fact that Dean couldn’t save, wasn’t enough to save, his own half-human daughter.