I kneel into a dream where I am good & loved.

dean is despondence personified–he’s spent days staring at sam’s dead body. there’s just nothing behind his eyes, no fear. just grim determination. just a mission.

sam is sweating and shaking and screaming and violent.

dean turns the destruction inwards, and sam turns it outwards.

there is nothing that can stand between sam and his brother, and he’ll prove it in blood if he has to. (and he wants to, given his sleepless pursuit of lilith, even when the offense has been rectified with dean being returned).

but for dean, he’s a second away from swallowing a bullet. if sam can’t be alive (like he should be, like he must be, like he deserves to be), then dean shouldn’t be either.

and even though sam’s action is inherently self-destructive here, he’ll do any-goddamn-thing, kill any-fucking-one, to do it. he literally tells dean in S4 that he tried opening the gates of hell to get him back. THE GATES!! OF HELL!!

dean will kill himself a million times to save sam, but sam will kill a million others to save dean, whether he’s the one pulling that trigger himself or not.

and sam is always framed as the more empathetic one!! but it’s a thin patina that cracks and cracks and cracks and won’t hold up the second dean is threatened! it’s fake! it’s well-intentioned, and sam wants it to be real, but it’s not.