I saw a post not too long ago that said they didn’t feel as though young!Dean was written/portrayed as kind enough to young!Sam, that we’re told things but that we don’t get to see them, and there’s some merit to that as a flaw in certain writing and, likely, in the directing chosen with the young actors, but in THIS instance, I think the edge of impatience is justified. it’s not actually about Sam. there’s some frustration with Sam in that big-brother-annoyed-with-younger-sibling way, but he’s an angry, lonely kid here because of John, because their father has left them on their own for days, at the ages of roughly nine and five. a nine year old child is not equipped to flawlessly parent a five year old. nine year olds aren’t allowed to babysit, they have babysitters (I babysat as a teenager, there’s no way I’d leave a nine year old alone for any extended time. I left a nine year old alone for five minutes to tend to her baby brother and she decided to eat dog biscuits to find out what they tasted like, which wasn’t a big deal and didn’t hurt her, but still, like…kids! they don’t always have the best judgment or impulse control. when I myself was nine, and my mom was at work, I was with my grandparents, not left to my own devices). it is neglectful, considering even grown adults make mistakes with their five year olds. yet John puts the entire weight of that burden on Dean before he leaves - it only takes one mistake, you got that?
one mistake is all it takes, and Dean himself is not seen as a priority or as a vulnerable kid.
John: Lock the doors, the windows, close the shades. Most important–
young!Dean: Watch out for Sammy.
an instruction which literally colors his entire life.
further, John says, That’s my man. to his child. as a way to force his child to be a parent, but also as a sort of compliment - c’mon, now, Dean, you’re so grown-up, you can handle this, you’ve already had a gun in your hands, you KNOW what’s out there in the dark, you know there are monsters that rip people to shreds, you know the heat of the fire the smell of the smoke your eyes burning from the blaze, you’re not a kid, you never were one. it infuses it with a sense of importance - he’s entrusted with a task, he has to do it right.
so Sam asks for cereal, and Dean may slam the box and the bowl down with annoyance, but the point is that he still gives it to him. because Sam is just a sweet little kid, he’s allowed to be. and Dean is his protector and caregiver and, alone in that motel room, mother/brother.
Dean leaves him to go to the arcade and this sometimes gets treated as a reckless, selfish decision, but again, he is a child. a child with no normal socialization, cooped up in a motel room, no idea when - or IF - his dad is coming back, having to parent his little brother. of course he craves some time for himself. of course he wants the simplicity of playing a game. of course he doesn’t think that one action could endanger his brother. of course he gets blamed for it. and in that withering glare from John, he internalizes that guilt.
he looked at me different, you know? Which was worse. Not that I blame him. He gave me an order and I didn’t listen, I almost got you killed.
at the age of four, we don’t have complete verbal skills. it’s when we begin using more complete sentences. we can count, maybe a little greater than ten, and recognize certain letters. possibly we learn to write our names. we start developing finer motor skills (like using utensils, brushing our own teeth, buttoning clothes). we are malleable and full of possibility that has yet to take shape, because we’re still closer to when we were infants than we even are to adolescence.
at the age of four, Dean ceased being…whoever that little one was, whoever Dean was going to be. we know that for a while he stopped talking. the tag above that says: ‘dean’ little precious dean burned alongside his mother on a ceiling all those years ago <- it’s true. that Dean didn’t make it out of the fire. baby Sam was put into his arms and Dean became something and someone else altogether.
I pulled this post up from my old old blog months ago, and have had it in my drafts for a while, and I would’ve reblogged it without extra note had I not in passing seen the commentary about young!Dean’s portrayal and wanted to remark on it here, but now I also keep thinking about this post. “Dean’s WHOLE role in the family which he thought he was filling he was actually creating. MARY is not even mary. ONLY dean is mary.” which is also true. the Mary we’re told burned on the ceiling wasn’t really the Mary who existed. beautiful, silken, white nightgown Mary was always an ideal, and later a figment, and later (for better or worse) proven false altogether. John takes Dean and tries to fit him into the mold of something that never existed, Dean tries to fill a mold that never existed - he is the mold, he creates the mold. only he embodies it. he can never be her, but she was never her. she can never be him. only Dean is mother Mary.
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.
“I couldn’t do it” is the theme all the way back to this episode. the shtriga nearly drains Sam and that’s put on Dean. he wanted a bowl of cereal and was slightly impatient about it, and that’s a failing unless he relents, so he relents (which is not Sam’s fault, Sam is also an entirely innocent child who has no concept of what’s happening or why he shouldn’t simply ask for what he wants). Dean is nurturer and nourishment, savior and soldier. he’s the one who’s there to give comfort in the dark. some part of Dean was always dead, and another part of him was always a ghost, and he eked out his space in echoes of a revered mother and shadows of an absent father, and somehow, remarkably, he still also unflinchingly became himself. his trauma and his capacity for love were fused together in that fire, molten pieces that cooled and can’t be separated. he was never again only Dean.
