I Like It Here Inside My Head

and fury was right, because what did tony do when he got the call? he asked fury how long they had. and then he Got To Fucking Work.

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The funny thing is, Civil War is what made me ship Steve and Tony again, and I feel like how people engage with CW's take on them depends on where their feelings already were when that movie came out. I'm speaking broad strokes but not to universal experiences, plus shipping is subjective. Thoughts behind the cut.

I am very glad we as a society have been having more conversations about Cas's lone wolf flavored romantic hero knightly chivalry bullshit, but if you ask me, I think a big part of that starts here.

Like, Cas makes the decision post-S5 to leave Dean to his suburban domesticity with Lisa For His Own Good or whatever, but like... a huge part of that is because Cas has seen Dean break down over being asked to carry the weight of the world. Dean lay bloody and beaten in a hospital bed, weeping through a recently-crushed trachea and pleading with Cas to find someone else to take over the burden of responsibility because he couldn't handle it.

Of course this rewires Cas's brain and makes him eventually decide that it is his personal job to prevent Dean from having to carry that burden of universal responsibility ever again.

He is not, in fact, successfully meeting Dean's needs, because by the time Cas going off by himself to troubleshoot cosmic problems becomes an Issue™ for them, Dean's actual emotional needs are much more strongly rooted in Cas being there than anything else... but the tendency itself (while also drawing on a lot of other sources including but not limited to Cas's daddy issues) comes, in its deepest essence, from a desire to relieve Dean of the burden he carries.

Like fundamentally Cas is the only close connection Dean has who looks at him and says no, you should not have to carry this enormous burden that is too big for you and too much for any person to reasonably be expected to carry and that you've been forced to bear all on your own for much too long.

The only real problem with that is that he follows up that deeply compassionate emotional response with "I, of course, am not a person* and will carry all the weight of the world myself so you don't have to :)"

*citation fucking needed

Sam’s voicemail: If this is an emergency, call my brother.

Dean’s voicemail: If this is an emergency, leave a message or try my other phone.

Oooh that’s difficult. Hmm. HMMM.

1.02 "I figure our family's so screwed to hell... maybe we can help some others"

"Saving people, hunting things, the family business" etc etc yeah. But ALSO we often ignore that this whole conversation is centered around not letting desperation for revenge consume you, and Dean's care for others including strangers—wanting to keep them from experiencing the traumas that he has.

DEAN Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man. SAM How do you do it? How does Dad do it? DEAN looks over at HALEY and BEN. DEAN Well for one, them. I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable.

4.22 "Stepford Bitch in Paradise"

This one is a good representation of Dean's refusal to back down, caring about the whole world, and arguing fiercely to protect it, as well as his ability to stir up the care and love in others.

DEAN Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? CASTIEL What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam. DEAN You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it.

12.22 "I hate you and I love you"

Just a very good summary of Dean's childhood experiences and how they have effected him, and how he (yet again) stirs up the care and love in others (and pulls people from mind control over and over via the power of love <3)

I hate you. You lied to me. I was a kid. You promised you'd keep me safe. And then you make a deal with Azazel. Yeah, it saved Dad's life, but I'll tell you something else that happened. Because on November 2, 1983, old Yellow Eyes came waltzing in to Sammy's room, because of your deal. You left us. Alone. 'Cause Dad was just a shell. His perfect wife? Gone. Our perfect Mom, the perfect family... was gone. And I... I had to be... more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe. And that wasn't fair. And I couldn't do it. And you wanna know what that was like? They killed the girl that he loved. He got possessed by Lucifer. They tortured him in Hell. And he lost his soul. His soul. All because of you. All of it was because of you. I hate you. I hate you. And I love you. 'Cause I can't – I can't help it. You're my Mom. And I understand...'cause I have made deals to save the ones I love more than once. I forgive you. I forgive you. For all of it. Everything. On the other side of this, we can start over, okay? You, me, Sam. We can get it right this time. But I need you to fight. Right now, I need you to fight. I need you – I need you to look at me, Mom. I need you to really look at me and see me. Mom, I need you to see me. Please.

5.22 "Well, then I ain't gonna let him die alone"

Bobby and Cas try to convince Dean that they've lost and there's no point in trying to reach Sam.

BOBBY: You just don't give up. DEAN: It's Sam! CASTIEL: If you couldn't reach him here, you're certainly not gonna be able to on the battlefield. DEAN: Well, if we've already lost, I guess I got nothing to lose, right? CASTIEL: I just want you to understand – the only thing that you're gonna see out there is Michael killing your brother. DEAN: Well, then I ain't gonna let him die alone.

Dean pulls up at Stull right in front of two archangels who could blow him to smithereens, blasting music from his car and making an obnoxious scene. THEN Cas and Bobby show up right behind him (just as Michael says "you are not a part of the story!") Dean's refusal to give up defies causality, and his attitude is infectious.

While Dean is being beaten to death, he's saying,

DEAN: Sam, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not gonna leave you. I'm not gonna leave you.

Dean's refusal to abandon his brother fills Lucifer with jealous rage making his control slip, while simultaneously bringing dozens of memories of traveling with Dean to Sam's mind helping him surface and take control.

3.10 "I didn't deserve what he put on me"

I have trouble picking a 5th because there's so many different directions I could go (Dean and Cas in the Crypt, Dean reusing to abandon Cas in Purgatory, Dean in the cemetery in 2.20 crying over John's grave, Dean's "I'm not mad I'm worried" from "Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets" or the similar scene in "The Future", Dean convincing Chuck and Amara to make up, Dean refusing to give into Chuck's writing and kill Jack, Dean telling Chuck "We will never give you the ending you want", etc).

I think I have to go with 3.10 "Dream A Little Dream of Me" because it summarizes a lot of Dean's intrusive thoughts and his overactive sense of responsibility and guilt, identifies the origin of those feelings, connects all of it to his depression and suicidality, and then circles back to the fact that he knows deep down that he doesn't deserve to feel this way, that he's not a tool for others to use, that he is his own person, and that he deserves to live.

at the end of s14, everything happens so fast. cas finally admits to himself something's really wrong with jack. meanwhile jack's killed nick and mary. dean is devastated. rightfully angry. then jack's manipulated into fucking with the whole world. they don't know what to do. the plan dean and sam come up with seems like the only thing with anything close to jack's power. and even cas suggests locking jack away until they have more time to work things out. like i cannot overstate how dramatically quickly everything is unfolding. chuck shows up and says jack will end the world. dean was never gonna be okay with the world ending. was never gonna be okay with anyone but himself sacrificing to make that happen. instead they find out chuck is messing with them. he kills jack, opens hell, and they spend an awful horrible week trying to fight ghosts they thought they'd dealt with long ago, while trying to keep a whole town safe and calm, while grieving jack's death, while having to talk to a demon in his corpse, while reckoning with the fact that everything they've ever known is a lie and an elaborate set-up for a cosmic being's entertainment. like it is punch after punch for weeks and weeks with no breathing room. finally culminating in cas doing something which makes sense but is also very much a pattern where he just decides what to do. which results in rowena dying and sam being entirely torn up.

the conversation dean is having right before cas leaves in 15.03 is trying to take care of a broken up sam. based on what dean says it seems like they haven't even been home for a day. like they haven't even had a moment to try to decompress from the series of escalating, terrifying events which they've been dealing with for days and days pretty much nonstop.

it always strikes me then that what cas says is "You used to trust me, give me the benefit of the doubt. Now you can barely look at me..... I've tried to talk to you, over and over, and you just don't want to hear it. You don't care. I'm... dead to you." i recognize he's parroting back something dean said in 14.18 but i don't understand, i really don't, what the timeline he's working off is. like when is dean supposed to have enough space to work through the emotional ramifications of everything above. when is he supposed to have calmed down enough settle in to feeling any one kind of way.

"You still blame me for Mary." like it just happened, my guy. like where was he supposed to work in grieving for his mom (again) and working to move on from the grief and blame, into fighting off a ghost apocalypse and finding out god is basically jacking off to his pain.

i think patience and understanding has always been one of dean's strong suits. and i think cas tends toward impatience more. and it does make sense that when dean truly does get to the edge of his patience, that feels like a breaking point to cas because he has always had access to it before.

like i am not the first to point out that the issues that lead to 15.03 are a long-time pattern of behavior from cas! dean feels angry and betrayed and hurt not only because of what happened at the end of s14 but also for all the ways it calls back to a pattern of hurt!

BUT ALSO dean not offering immediate forgiveness is literally not at all a pattern.... like he is so forgiving often to the point of being so while still in the midst of suffering the effects of the hurt. so it's just sad to me to see the time where he can't offer it so immediately as though that's like some longtime character flaw when it's just. JUST NOT.

there is no home without you, buddy

Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl

you threaten security with pepper spray? your name is pepper forever now.

you look perpetually grumpy? your name is now happy. congratulations.

james rhodes? nope. that’s rhodey actually.

-

That night, his room at SHIELD is hard to fall asleep in.

As he does most nights, Steve pulls the sheets and the pillow off the bed because the mattress is too soft and makes himself a new bed on the floor, but the downside is that the floor is colder. The rooms don't have individual heating units and no one has told him where the central controls are, so for the last few weeks, Steve has pulled on sweats and a hoodie over top of an undershirt and put on socks for good measure too. He isn't just cold when he's trying to sleep—he seems to run chilly almost all the time, everywhere he goes. It must be a side effect from spending so long in the Arctic ice.

Steve tosses and turns for a while before sitting up, restless. He can't get Tony and what he'd offered out of his head. Tony, who apparently looked for him for a long time before SHIELD did and might be the only familiar piece of anything left in this future.

Steve climbs out of his makeshift bed and gets out the laptop SHIELD assigned to him. He has no illusions about having any kind of privacy on it, but if anyone at SHIELD has a problem with him typing Tony Stark into the search bar, it isn't him who has something to hide.

I got absolutely CONSUMED with missing stevetony this weekend, then remembered i had a tony stark bingo card sitting untouched in my email and decided to dust off my fic writing fingers for the first time in actual YEARS

help me i missed it so much.

they are soft and cozy here because no matter how long it's been that is my favorite way for them to be!!

****

It’s not exactly unusual for Tony to get home late. But these days it’s more and more likely that Steve and Tony get home late together. Tonight, however, Steve looks at his watch and sighs, wondering what could possibly be keeping Tony. 

Steve himself had been home for nearly two hours. He’s showered and changed, had a snack, and he’d be thinking about dinner and a long, lazy evening on the couch or in the lab right about now, except Tony still isn’t home. 

the ever-perceptive natasha romanoff, sniffing crushes left and right like it's her job*

*it kinda is, and the crushes are obvious, but that's not her fault!

marvel parallels 43/?