Spoiler alert if you haven't seen 13.21 "Beat the Devil". This is set just after Dean sees Sam attacked.
They were supposed to die together.
That's what Sam had said.
If they died, they were supposed to do it together.
This wasn't what was supposed to happen.
It happened in a split second. A split second forever seared into Dean's mind. The brutality of the vampires. The swiftness of the attack. The finality of the torn carotid artery.
Sam had probably been dead before his body had hit the ground.
Dean had seen his brother die before.
The fact that they'd both died and come back to life again several times did nothing to ease the agony. They'd died more times than he could count and had been given more chances than he could remember. Any one of their deaths could have been their last one. Their last escape from the clutches of the great beyond. It might have been a laughing matter for other people. Might have had eyeballs rolling in disbelief that death still held any meaning to either of them. After all, hadn't they died and come back enough times to make the entire process rather mundane? Was there really any meaning to it when they had come back from death before?
Watching his brother die over and over and being forever helpless to prevent it was not mundane. It was his worst nightmare and he was living it again right now in a universe that wasn't even their own.
Dean fought Cas, trying desperately to go after his brother, but lost the battle.
The greater good and all that.
The cold hard fact that there was nothing he could do for Sam.
So they left the tunnel. They left his little brother's body to the merciless ravagers who had ripped him apart.
Dean walked out of the tunnel and left his heart and soul. His reason for living.
He didn't care about this world. He was tired of caring for their world. He knew their mother and Jack were out there somewhere and that Sam would have insisted he go on no matter what. Go on and save them. Save this world that Dean hated. Then go back and save their own world.
But he was tired of saving the world and he was tired of caring and he was tired of watching his brother die. He marched forward with only one plan. Get the group to the camp and then go back for Sam.
Cas and Gabriel, his mom and Jack. Charlie and Bobby. The rest of the people of this world could save themselves.
There was no saving Sam and there was no saving him. Dean would go back, fight his way to his brother. Fight until he could fight no longer. And then he'd fall next to Sam.
Because this wasn't what was supposed to happen.
If they died, they were going to do it together.
That's what Sam had said.
They were going to die together.
Ugh! This episode killed me. This little scene came to me out of the blue today. There may be more tags to come...