You can tell the level of awesomeness of an episode when it starts sprouting tags and missing scenes even before it airs *g*. So this is a sort of connecting scene between 4.20 and 4.21, with no real spoilers from the later other than what we've seen in the promo. As always, kudos to Jackfan2 for her marvelous beta-skills. All eventual hidden misspell or general nonsense are my bad, not hers. Enjoy!
THE STUFF OF HEROES
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Everyone was cutting their loses, hedging their bets and aiming for the ending with the less damaging results. When the whole world around you starts to look like it's fucked sideways, it's the smart thing to do, it's the logical thing to do. It's what smart people do.
What it certainly isn't, is the stuff of heroes.
No, heroes struggle on, despite the odds, despite the chances, despite the hard, solid proof that they will not succeed, that they will fail so epically that they'll come out looking like martyrs.
Replace heroes for idiots and martyrs for retards and you've pretty much have Bobby's train of thought down to the dot.
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God had been the first one to do the smart thing. No one saw Him, no one heard from Him, not even His own angels knew His will anymore. Free will, fend for yourselves. Come and pick your semantics.
Following their Father's example, the angels had been the next ones. The ones who cared, anyway.
Castiel, as far as Bobby could tell from Dean's half babbled re-tale, had turned his back on his human charge, losing whatever connection the older Winchester had managed to groom in to him.
Bobby couldn't really blame the angel for being scared and cutting the strings like that. Not really, and not without coming out looking like a complete hypocrite.
Dean has a way of getting under your skin, bending you to his will, so much so that it can become frightening and down right eerie. However, stick around long enough, get to know him well enough and you soon discover that he's not even aware that he has that effect on people and, therefore, would never intentionally use that 'skill' to either take advantage or harm you. Either that, or you just stop caring about consequences and just let him in.
Castiel had pulled away, or had been pulled away, before he could even reach that phase and understand that it was ok to allow yourself to be attached like that.
And with Castiel's support gone, the only angels left were the ones who didn't care and would never get close enough to Dean for him to exercise his 'powers'. Namely, Zachariah.
Bobby had never even seen Zachariah, but his actions spoken plenty for him. And he didn't like what they were telling.
The fact this fellow had been responsible for Bobby almost crawling back inside the bottle that he had sworn off after Dean's return, didn't help his case. And it wasn't even a case of ill will, because if anything, Bobby was a fair guy. It was just that learning that Dean was in the hospital, badly beaten, followed by more than three weeks of complete silence would do that to a guy.
When you have the apocalypse knocking on your door and you learn that the people you love, your family, are closely involve in the matter and they go missing, you don't assume they went on vacation and forgot to tell you. You imagine them bloody and not breathing in some dark alley in the middle of nowhere.
So, Bobby wasn't exactly sure what this new guy's angle was, but he had few doubts that Sam and Dean's safety were anywhere near the top of his priorities list. Like the corporate persona that this angel had assumed for himself, Dean was only one of many working bees under his command, yet another tool to be used and forced to yield to his orders. If he happened to break down, the only think Zachariah would grieve was the delay in the assembly line.
That one would stick around, if nothing else because there was nothing at stake here that mattered to the angels, other than their willingness to prove that they could get the job done.
Earth and every single one of its inhabitants, whether they be cognitive beings or not, were nothing but concepts to these heavenly creatures. And a concept can always be recreated and changed as many times as it seems fit when you have no care for the original draft.
Just so long as Lucifer was stopped from rising, thereby proving God and his angel's as incompetents, Earth and all of its original ideas, from the caterpillar to the most complicated man-made machine, could all lay to waste.
In terms of priorities and concern over ones well-being, Dean was somewhere between dirt and that caterpillar, or so it seemed to anyone looking.
And now Sam was leaving too. Not physically, because Bobby could still hear him screaming and banging against the walls of his 'special' room, but just gone. The sweet, caring, empathic kid that Bobby had known ever since he was in diapers, was gone.
Or at least so deeply hidden that you could barely glimpse anything more of the good man Sam used to be.
The new thing in his place was scary. Like Dean's voice on the phone.
Having known the Winchesters from the time they were tadpoles, Bobby acquired a unique perspective about them; those boys are like polar opposites in just about everything they do, and the ways they react to things.
When faced with a question, Sam turned to books; Dean turned to people.
When Sam was happy, he took his sweet time in letting you know; when Dean was happy, he went off like a firecracker.
When Sam was sad, he brought the whole room down; when Dean was sad, he wouldn't tell you and you would never find out.
When Sam was mad, he was as quiet as a mouse, silently plotting the downfall of those who had pissed him off; when Dean was mad, he yelled and hit things and just like that it was over. He could never hold his anger long enough to seek revenge.
When faced with a challenge, Sam would sneak around and plot; Dean, on the other hand, charged like a bull on red cloth. Now, however, when facing danger, this new Sam charges like a bull on red cloth; Dean sneaks around.
When Sam was scared, he turned to his strengths; when Dean was scared, he turned to his family.
So, when Bobby got that first phone call from Dean, asking him to get his panic room empty and ready for Sam, the older man was both sad and content. Because Dean was being sneaky around his brother, which made Sam the danger, and because he had turned to Bobby for help, which made him family.
There was a lot of crap to be taken out from that room. Bobby had spend a lot of time and care in to stocking it with everything he would need or could ever possibly dream of needing to outlast a siege. Turning it in to a holding cell for a friend took some time.
Dean had been a bit vague about his motives and reasons, his voice hurried and whispered, leading Bobby to believe that Sam wasn't very far or could walk in on them at any time. Bobby felt a bit like the mistress to a cheating husband.
During that hushed, rushed conversation, all Bobby got for sure was that Sam was growing more and more powerful, faster than any normal evolution of any species and that Ruby had something to do with it. Darwin would have a thing or two to say about that, Bobby was sure.
It didn't take much convincing to get Bobby behind Dean's plan and hurry to take everything that could be used as a weapon or as a way out from that room.
All Bobby needed was Dean's word to know that this was the right course of action. That tricking Sam, locking him up was the only way to keep him and the demon-bitch apart long enough for them to realize what she was doing to the younger Winchester and to be able to do something about it.
If Dean was suggesting some eleventh-hour solution like that, Bobby knew that he had already ran out of other options.
And then the second call had come in and Dean had put him on hold. Castiel was missing and they were stuck babysitting Jimmy, its human vessel. Which gave time for Bobby to wonder about all the possible outcomes of standing that close to a bulls-eye and exactly what would happened when he and Dean actually got Sam trapped.
Bobby was sure that Dean had already run all the scenarios inside his head, figuring what would happen to Sam and what they could do about it.
Bobby was also sure that Dean hadn't spent a single second wondering about what it would do to him.
The third call wasn't a call at all, just a simple text message saying 'We're coming'.
And then it was his turn to make a call and lie his teeth out. That had hurt more than it should.
Turned out that the missing piece that they were searching for was demon blood. As in Sam, voluntarily and, going from Dean's description, quite eagerly, drinking it fresh from the source.
Turned out that, as soon as that heavy door closed in on Sam and Dean could finally relax, he fell down, shaking like a damn green leaf in the winter.
Turned out that, as always, Bobby was right and everything had smacked in to Dean at the same time, literally taking him out at the knees.
Bobby had never seen Dean react like that. It scared the crap out of him because, after a whole life of dealing with private, cocky, self-assured and downright annoying Dean, Bobby had no idea what to do with a frail Dean.
So he did the best he knew. He grabbed the kid by his arms, dragged his unresponsive and numb body upstairs, away from the disturbing sounds and angry words that Sam was screaming at them, and got Dean utterly drunk.
It was surprisingly hard to do that these days. Bobby had figured that, with all the memories and all the added weight on his shoulders, Dean might've been pushing the bottle's advice a bit too hard lately. Bobby couldn't really blame him, not when he understood the comfort of alcohol numbness all to well.
Bobby wasn't proud of it, but by the time Dean's shaking had graduated in to full on gasps of empty air in to his chest, Bobby pulled out the big guns and slipped a mickey in to Dean's beer.
It was a testament to just how desperate and broken Dean was that he didn't even try to fight it. Just that quiet acceptance of realizing what Bobby had done and the silent thank you his red-rimmed eyes whispered before closing shut. He went down like a felled tree on Bobby's couch, slack body finally relaxing in the comfort of relinquishing the control of the situation to someone else.
Bobby thought he had seen desperate-Dean when Sam had died in Cold Oak. He was wrong.
Because that Dean had been angry, that Dean had been proactive, that Dean had been ferocious in his reactions. This Dean had no idea what to do. This Dean was fucking grateful to be knocked unconscious without being asked permission. This Dean just pushed forward, blind to where he was heading and helpless to stop himself. This Dean had given up control of himself, in some silent sacrifice that might push someone to control Sam.
But the only thing that he seemed incapable of giving up on.... was on Sam. And his hope. Hope that Sam could still be saved.
The one thing that seemed like the smart thing to do when you find out that a human is willingly drinking demon blood and losing himself in the process, was the one thing that Dean stubbornly refused to do: cut his losses and just give up.
Cut the evil at its source; mourn what you lose now to avoid mourning the entire world.
But Dean wasn't smart like that. The big damn idiot would just rather wear himself raw with guilt over locking his brother up –even if it is for Sam's own good- and drive himself bloody trying to prevent events over which he has no control, before he admits defeat and starts considering damage control and preserving himself. Even if he would be preserving himself to fight another day, to lose another battle.
You see, idiots are just like that. They struggle against the tide, they fight the impossible odds and they never look back to the easiest path, just like those damn horny salmons, searching for that ultimate goal of perpetuating their species, that final and fatal nookie at the end of the river.
And those who love them can do nothing more than stand aside and watch them walk steadily to the end, head held high, ready to give free reign to their retard tendencies and just hope against all hope that there's something good to come out of all of that misery and suffering.
Now, just replace idiots for heroes and retards for martyrs and you get a good picture of why Bobby stands watch over a drugged up, unconscious Winchester, listens to the insanity pouring out of the mouth of the locked Winchester and doesn't walk away. Never walks away.
The end