[ Hanging back from the conversation as he listens and watches Cas work through the scrap of information, his eyebrows raise at the conclusion. If he's honest? Meeting a version of himself from five years back was weird, but it had been brief. So brief that there hadn't been all that much time for who he was before to really understand how much he'd changed when shaped by a dying world.
Thinking about the fact that he arrived here knowing he'd sent Cas to his death, walking straight into the past angel version of that person had been met with anger because allowing himself to process it any other way would have meant delving into all his failures. And somehow, despite all the crap he's thrown at the Cas standing in front of him, they aren't at odds anymore. They're not best friends either but Dean realizes it's way more than he figured would be possible or something he wanted after those first few meetings.
He shakes his head, leveling Cas with a messy kind of expression that looks uncomfortable, lost and a little empathetic. Who knew he still had empathy to draw on either? ]
He told me what happened. And I told him you're here. I'm not the guy to give advice on--
[ He gestures, like he's searching for the right word and considering how bad their conversations have gone in the past, he feels like he usually doesn't pick the right ones. ]
Look, man. All I'm sayin' is I thought you should know. He knows too. And in some ways you couldn't be more goddamn different. But in other ways you're the same. I have no idea what he's gonna say to you, but just uh--
[ He pauses, frowning, words a broken path of him clumsily trying to get to what it is he's trying to say here. It's been a long time since he offered some kind of support beyond just being a leader to troops. How exactly this Cas is going to view the broken Cas that just showed up? He has no idea. He can't even say this to that broken version from his world because they're just not at a place where conversations are anything but traded barbs and a murky history. ]
He never left. You never left. Even though you should have.
no subject
Thinking about the fact that he arrived here knowing he'd sent Cas to his death, walking straight into the past angel version of that person had been met with anger because allowing himself to process it any other way would have meant delving into all his failures. And somehow, despite all the crap he's thrown at the Cas standing in front of him, they aren't at odds anymore. They're not best friends either but Dean realizes it's way more than he figured would be possible or something he wanted after those first few meetings.
He shakes his head, leveling Cas with a messy kind of expression that looks uncomfortable, lost and a little empathetic. Who knew he still had empathy to draw on either? ]
He told me what happened. And I told him you're here. I'm not the guy to give advice on--
[ He gestures, like he's searching for the right word and considering how bad their conversations have gone in the past, he feels like he usually doesn't pick the right ones. ]
Look, man. All I'm sayin' is I thought you should know. He knows too. And in some ways you couldn't be more goddamn different. But in other ways you're the same. I have no idea what he's gonna say to you, but just uh--
[ He pauses, frowning, words a broken path of him clumsily trying to get to what it is he's trying to say here. It's been a long time since he offered some kind of support beyond just being a leader to troops. How exactly this Cas is going to view the broken Cas that just showed up? He has no idea. He can't even say this to that broken version from his world because they're just not at a place where conversations are anything but traded barbs and a murky history. ]
He never left. You never left. Even though you should have.