Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The five days Tyler's stolen my voice from me, I spend watching. The commons, group therapy. I visit my cave with my eyes open. Mills should get used to the cold. I've heard if it drops below 50 while your respiration is this depressed, you go to sleep and never wake up.
Valley of the Dogs.
An orderly with fresh bruises peppering his temple lets me take my walk in the same time Mills is carted around. This is how I must've looked for months. Glazed. Drooling. At this point they probably have to use elephant tranquilizers on me, the tolerance I've built.
God, his petty ass, we meet up for one on one and he says he has to give me some bad news.
No, it's not about Mills.
Tyler, whatever.
He is giving me the bad news, of the passing of one Marla Singer. Everyone seems to think this is bad news. Found dead in her apartment because she didn't pick up any Meals on Wheels for her neighbors for three weeks, and they worried about those little old ladies, up there all starving alone since their angel in black stopped showing up.
Her corpse was found, instead. I imagine it all waxy, tits rotted off just like she said, at some point you're so sick even the bacteria in your gut won't bother decomposing you. I imagine Marla's skin pulling back, fleeing, away from her eyes, her teeth, like a mummy. Dried out as all her collagen rots.
Paper clutched in her hand. A will, sort of hasty and half-assed.
Marla's many worldly possessions all fit on a hotel notepad.
Many other worthless things go to a small number of worthless people Marla has mentioned leaving behind in her life, and god says, Marla Singer has left me something.
That's the entire reason I get to know all of this.
If not, I would've never known.
The world could blow up, and you'd never know in here unless it was in someone's will to tell you.
Marla Singer left me her dildo.
Oh, Marla.
Addressed me in the will half the time as Tyler.
I wonder, did the cancer spread from her tits to her brain, like the cancer I didn't have. It's everywhere now. God says they're working out treatment. I wonder if it matters.
Without Tyler between us, I don't really know what connected me and Marla.
What kept her calling.
I liked her. Another psycho boyfriend in her stories. There will never be another, unless she's gone to Heaven, the real one, and they've got some sort of exchange program going on for her to have fun with.
I think Marla might deserve that. She deserved better than this.
I wonder if it was pills. There was no Tyler to save her, this time. No one to listen to her death rattle. I don't have the voice to ask.
I won't be getting her dildo, because you don't get possessions in a psych ward. It'll get dumped in some other landfill to persist for time immemorial with all the other plastic iconography of our stupid, stupid lives.
Released back out to pasture, I watch Mills. His wife was murdered. Murdered, you see, it's an action, and it's solvable. Mills solved it.
You can't solve the slow death. Not really.
I think about how empty Mills is.
Am I empty?
An unidentifiable amount of time ago, Marla called me again, and she told me all about what happens at the new support groups she goes to, since I ruined the old ones for her. They were willing to rally behind her for the whole blowing my brains out show, and she only would've had to wait them out for six months or so, but she decided to just find new ones. A new church, with new temptations like Living With Angels, a group for those caring for severe dementia patients, and Recovery Road: a program for those trying to rebuild their lives after a loved one blew them up. She said, when I got out, we could both go to that one, and I could talk about Tyler, and she could talk about me, and we could have fun getting kicked out together.
Marla was always talking about that. When I got out.
I wasn't ever hearing any of it.
Mills, they've let up on him, finally, you can see his eyeballs aren't floating with all they've juiced him up on. He's watching me, back.
I wonder if he knows about Marla.
Would Tyler care?
Tyler had said, don't call this love.
Does it need to be?
When I get my voice back, I bury my thoughts on the subject and Marla and everything in a relentless campaign to needle Mills until he looks like a voodoo doll in a shitty tourist trap.
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bradley’s house feels empty. it’s always a bit of a shock, to step over the threshold from sunny, sandy san diego into the gaping abyss of his old house. it’s felt that way for nearly as long as he can remember.
first, it was the absence of nick bradshaw. his mother, bless her soul, tried so hard--goose’s old knickknacks spilling over shelves and table surfaces, the ever-permeating smell of recipes gathered from the other military wives (always with just a tinge of burning), the garden she kept in full bloom--but she was just one woman and the house was built for a family, not a widow and her four year old son. bradley remembers pockets of silence. nights with carole staring blankly at the tv, the only source of light and sound, some game show host’s plastic laugh echoing into the ceiling.
and then carole died and bradley fled the nest for maverick (and iceman’s) home.
when he finally returned, a man now, he couldn’t even make it through the door. no dad. no mom. no maverick. but there was ice on the phone laying out his options. selling it is even more unthinkable than living in it.
so bradley rents it out. to families, couples, rowdy groups of college kids. he hopes it fits them better than it ever did him.
then the mission happens and recuperating in the barracks sounds even worse than if he’d just laid down in the snow and died, so back to the house it is.
natasha had dropped him off at the door, worried eyes as he took a fortifying breath and opened the door to darkness, but he waved her off. he’s been alone with the silence for a few days. no matter how many lamps he turns on or how many windows he opens, it’s all so cold and dark and quiet. hollow.
that changes quickly.
jake muscles his way through bradley’s door and bradley can’t even stop him, his and mav’s crash landing leaving him with a limited range of mobility.
jake uses all his pots and pans and puts them back in the wrong places. he leaves his jackets over the back of the chairs, the sofa, the door handles. his voice booms down every corner, making snide comments at bradleys choice in decor or telling some fantastic story to coyote over the phone. bradley can’t turn his head without some evidence of jakes overwhelming intrusion into his life.
and he realizes he hasn’t heard an echo for days.
because jake seresin is big. big head, big talk, too big for his boots.
too big for top gun—the narrow hallways and stuffed classrooms. too big for the bars they find themselves occupying—spreading himself all over the pool table, dominating the dart board, somehow always punching a new track into the jukebox. and certainly too big for the aircraft carriers. hell, bradleys surprised he even fits in the cockpit.
it’s an opinion everyone shares. that hangman is a lot. too much. he exists and he does it loudly and largely. there isn’t a room on earth that could fit him and his ego. you’d suffocate if you stand too close too long.
but for the first time in days, bradley can breathe and the air doesnt taste stale.
later, jake will tell him about the seresin house. the fields that swallow you whole, the endless expanse of blank walls, the dining table with too many chairs. little jakey seresin, filling himself up with hot air, trying to fill the space his parents love never did.
too small for the house of his childhood, too big for the bunks, but here, his sound and spirit nestle into the space, into all the nooks and crannies that had been cold as long as bradley can remember.
bradley doesn’t think the bradshaw home feels empty anymore. he doesn’t think jake feels like too much anymore. he thinks it all fits perfectly.
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(1/2) May I please vent for a moment? I have a lot of very Sam feels lately, and I never really see much about this so maybe my POV is skewed. I rewatched the episode Unity (15.17), One of the points in the episode is that if Jack kills Chuck right then, everyone who has died and been brought back to life will be dead again. Dean says he doesn't care, let them all die. Sam asks "Even me?" and Dean doesn't answer, just repeats that Chuck must die. To me this is one of the most heartbreaking
2/2) scenes because we have 15 years of Dean doing anything to save Sam, even when Sam didn't want to be saved, and now when Sam has is good with their relationship and their definition of family and how they live their lives is when Dean doesn't care? Maybe it's just me but the look on Sam's face at that moment was absolutely devastated. Dean, now is when you don't put your brother and your relationship before everything??? Is it just me? OK, it's just me. Sorry for the long rant.
Oh darling you are always welcome to vent for any moments, especially with feels.
First off, that scene is fucking incredible. There is SO MUCH emotion in it. Devastating. And it's a sign of how good it is and how much emotion they brought to it that it has affected you so deeply, so bear that in mind.
But, because I abso-fucking-lutely love that scene and you gave me a perfect opportunity to geek out in way too much detail about it, let's take an extended look.
Dean is so angry. He hates Chuck. Hates him like he's hated possibly no one ever. I'm not sure he hates Lucifer as much as he hates Chuck, and that is truly saying something.
In the case of Lucifer, of literally anyone and anything else, even universe-ending threats like Amara, the priority was saving people, not killing the monster. Whatever was necessary, but not no matter the cost. The cost was born to save as many as could be (and later, to keep Sam as safe as could be). The ultimate was not death in and of itself, the point was salvation.
That's no longer the case here. The point is killing Chuck. Literally no matter the collateral damage, no matter the cost. This is a new level of desperation that we've never seen from Dean before, a new level of hatred.
(And it's coming from a place of intense powerlessness and violation, but more on that in a sec).
And right after Dean lays bare how truly deep that hatred runs, Sam asks that incredible, devastating, shocking line in response:
And Dean may not immediately have words at the ready, but his expression isn't a dismissal. He looks shocked that Sam could even ask, mouth forms an attempt at a scoff or denial or - or something. Something that, to me, clearly communicates 'no'. He looks hurt by Sam's question (which is important for contextualizing his next lines).
But interestingly enough, the scene cuts from there to Chuck and Amara, and the next spoken word is "Balance."
Chuck and Amara are siblings, and there is a parallel and foil happening between them versus Sam and Dean here, as there has been all season. Chuck absorbs Amara and subjugates her. He is still his toxic self, who wants all of the control and all of the power and is willing to destroy his sister, the only being in the entire universe who could be his equal, the only being in the entire multiverse and all creation who might be able to truly understand him.
And for what? Extra power? Maybe.
But maybe that's just what abusive people do -- they tear down your walls and take all of you, whatever they can get, and use and unmake you and destroy you, if given the opportunity. They remake you into their image, into what they want from you, so that you aren't allowed to exist with your own wants separate to what they want, and what they want for you.
That's what Chuck has just done with/to Amara. And there is no "balance" (no equality) to it.
Then we jump right back to Sam and Dean.
And I think you're reading that first line of Dean's as dismissing what Sam has just asked. Sam says "what about me?" and you said that Dean doesn't answer. And you're right, to a point, because hurt expression notwithstanding, he doesn't outright reply to Sam's explicit question.
But I'm not sure that that means he doesn't answer. Because you're also correct that Dean repeats, hurtles onward that Chuck has to die, that this has to happen. But I don't personally read it as a dismissal, and I do read it as Dean answering Sam's question, but maybe not in the way you think.
I read it as Dean protesting. I read it as him begging.
So let's go back over his reply one more time, with a close, if forgiving, reading:
Chuck has to die.
Dean's sentence is declarative, a statement of fact. It is necessary for Chuck to die. This is a need, a requirement.
He has to!
With the exclamation, the rise in his voice, and the repetition of the sentiment of the previous sentence (has to die), the declarative becomes more emotionally charged. It's not just that it is necessary for Chuck to die, it is necessary to Dean that Chuck die.
The emotion and repetition also make it clear, unlike a declarative, that this is not a certainty. "Earl had to die" is a calm declarative, a statement of necessity. Dean's emotional and repeated delivery moves this away from a statement, away from an agreed-upon certainty, and into something else. So what is it then, and where does he go next?
Otherwise he'll keep us tap dancing forever
Here, on the surface, Dean is providing reasons to back up his point that Chuck has to die. He's providing a counterfactual argument, what will happen if they don't kill Chuck, which is that they will never be free.
Looking deeper, Dean has shifted from the statement of Chuck's death as a necessity to a direct acknowledgement here that his death is not a certainty, by providing the "otherwise" case that acknowledges the potential for Chuck's continued survival.
Dean is also shifting the language over to 'us'. He's bringing Sam into this counterfactual argument. In doing so, it becomes clear that he is attempting to reason with Sam, to appeal to the consequences to Sam and to something that Sam (in Dean's eyes, at least, or else framing this argument this way would be pointless) should care about too.
and I can't live like that, man! I can't live like that!
Dean's words are now belying his desperation here. Not only has he acknowledged the possibility of Chuck not dying and the rational consequence he sees from that, but he is acknowledging the emotional consequence that will have for him, personally. This is something he cannot do. In repeating it, yelling it, he makes it a hard line of his. It is an impossibility, not an option. This is not tenable, to continue to live under Chuck, and for that reason, Chuck must die.
His logic has been laid out, now. He is asking Sam to join him in fighting Chuck, whose death Dean believes is necessary in order for them both (us) to live in an acceptable manner, otherwise he (Dean) cannot continue to live at all.
I won't!
Except, finally, acknowledgment that even that, even Dean's inability to live under Chuck, is not a material reality. Not a statement of cannot/is not, but rather it's a personal imperative. Won't, not can't. I choose not to. I refuse.
This couches his preceding sentences his a new light. This is his personal refusal, his personal feelings. Not a cold and rational reality or something which cannot be. It's not a foregone statement or necessity that Chuck die, it's Dean's need. His request.
And in the grander scheme of the emotion, the counterfactual of what it would mean to live under Chuck, the repeated necessity (repeated uncertainty) of Chuck dying, it lays bare that this is a plea. That Dean is begging his brother to join him in this. To stand by his side so that it is not trading Sam versus Chuck, but him and Sam standing together against Chuck and everything else in existence.
So, I read it as an implicit reply to Sam's question. "No, I would not trade you. Instead I'm demanding, no I am begging, that you stand by me so that we together can trade the rest of them. Because I refuse to live in this type of pain, and I hope this pain, these horrible consequences, are enough argument to convince you to join me."
-
Let's go back to that Chuck and Amara scene for a sec.
Their scene and Sam and Dean's are interspersed and keep cutting back and forth. Chuck is convincing Amara to carry out his plan, using words instead of violence, but doing so in a way that is manipulative, and for a decidedly selfish end. He wants to control and subsume her. That's the toxic and abusive outcome, with Chuck completely dominating and destroying his sister. His means aren't violent, but his desired ends absolutely are.
Meaning, the stand-off between Sam and Dean starts with violence. Dean, in his own right mind and not possessed or demonic or under any external influence, pulls a gun on Sam.
Sam is horrified, devastated. He immediately realizes the severity of how extreme this must be, for Dean to do this, something he's never done before, something that is in so many ways completely antithetical to who Dean is.
There is an altercation. Sam knocks the gun aside. Dean punches Sam. Dean's means are violent. The older brother, trying to convince and control his younger sibling to carry out his plan.
But Sam fights back.
Sam tells, demands that Dean listen. They argue.
THEY ARGUE.
Sam is not Amara. Rather than let himself be subsumed, he meets his brother where he is at, with violence, and holds him back. He meets Dean as an equal. And he outright demands with his body and with his words that Dean listen to him.
And Dean is not Chuck. Rather than wanting to control, subsume, or destroy Sam, Dean loves Sam as an equal. He loves Sam, period. His means are violent, but his ends, at least where Sam is concerned, are not, and have never been.
So when Sam demands Dean listen, Dean does. And that's when Dean begins to protest and plead.
But Sam continues to stand firm on his side, on what he knows is right. On what he learned from watching Dean -- about choices, about autonomy, about hope.
From the moment that Sam reminds Dean that they always have a choice, Dean has lost. The argument is over, and where Chuck and Amara have turned into something monstrous through their toxic consumption of one another, Sam and Dean have chosen a different path.
To be honest, Dean starts to lose even possibly before Sam reminds him of choices (of free will, the longest-standing theme of the entire show). It begins from the moment Dean turns his attention from urging Cas and Jack onward to acknowledging what Sam is saying, even if only to argue with it. The rest of it is his slow and aggrieved, desperate surrender. His pleas to Sam. Sam's pleas in return to him, which Dean allows (foregone by this point) to win him over.
From the moment Dean let Sam knock the gun aside, the rest of it is just the five stages of grief.
Denial: we don't have a choice. there's nothing else we can do.
Bargaining: I'd trade it all.
Anger: chuck has to die. he has to.
Depression: i can't live like that.
Acceptance:
So... while a dizzying and almost-ruinous moment that we get from Dean, I do have to disagree, nonnie. I don't think think that this moment is showing us that Dean doesn't care. I think it's showing us that he cares so much.
So much that he already knew he lost. That he was desperate and grieving and sad and doomed, so incredibly doomed, so that when Sam said "what about me?" Dean's reply wasn't a dismissal -- it was him begging his brother to understand, to sit with grace in the depth of Dean's despair. To join him.
And instead of letting Dean drag him into the same place of hopelessness, of helplessness, Sam does what they have always done for each other. He reaches his hand into the muck and grabs Dean's from where it is buried under so many layers of hurt, and he pulls him up again. He keeps his brother human.
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