Charlie loves Dean. She trusts him. He and Sam are the closest she has to brothers. He would do anything to protect her.
"If you hurt her, you hurt me," she'd told him, but she's lived a war; she knows there are casualties. She's been one before. Whatever they had to do to stop her dark doppelganger, she'd take the hits and walk them off.
Self-defense, she reminds herself. He had to do it, as her broken arm aches in its sling.
She wants it to feel true when she tells Dean she forgives him.
It has to be true.
