Not one of Lilith's favorites. Not one of Azazel's hounds. Not some ancient thing with enough power to have a name whispered instead of spoken. Just another crossroad-born mutt stationed in a forgotten corner of the Pit, where the screams blurred together until they became background noise.
Your job was simple. Keep the souls screaming.
You'd never climbed low enough to see the important floors.
Never met the Yellow-Eyed Demon himself. Never laid eyes on the human he'd dragged down there decades ago.
But everyone knew about Dean Winchester.
Or rather, everyone knew a different Dean Winchester.
Rumors in Hell bred faster than maggots.
Some swore Azazel had broken him in days.
Others insisted it had taken years, that he'd fought until there was nothing left to fight with.
Then came the stories that made even demons stop sharpening hooks just to listen.
The infamous Dean Winchester had taken up the knife.
He wasn't just good.
He was creative.
Some claimed he could make a soul beg to be flayed before he'd even touched them. Others swore he'd found new ways to hurt people that Hell itself hadn't thought of in millennia. There were whispers that even veteran torturers avoided comparing techniques with him, afraid he'd make them look amateur.
It sounded ridiculous.
Humans shattered. They cried. They pleaded. They didn't become legends.
Yet every tale ended the same way.
Azazel kept him close.
Too close.
Depending on who was talking, Dean was the Yellow-Eyes' prized weapon, favorite pet, right hand... or, if Balphegor had been drinking stolen grace again, his "little mistress."
That always earned a laugh.
Then Balphegor would grin wider, lean back like he knew something no one else did, and sigh dramatically.
"You lot keep talking about how dangerous he is."
A pause.
"I'm talking about how gorgeous he is."
Gorgeous.
Not terrifying.
Not imposing.
Not handsome.
Pretty.
Beautiful.
Words that sounded absurd in Hell.
You'd never seen a beautiful face.
The only humans you'd ever looked upon were stripped raw by agony, blurred into twitching silhouettes that forgot their own names before long. Demons weren't much better-- burned skin stretched over borrowed bones, eyes like old coals, smiles carved too wide into faces pretending to be human.
Beauty was a language Hell had forgotten.
And yet somehow, every demon who'd seen Dean Winchester reached for the same impossible words.
Pretty.
Beautiful.
Gorgeous.
You figured they had to be exaggerating.
Hell exaggerated everything.
It had to.
...Right?
No one had been exaggerating.
Not about Dean Winchester.
They just hadn't been talking about the right thing.
The first time you saw him was also the first time you saw an angel.
It began with light.
Not fire-- Hell had fire.
Not lightning-- Hell had storms.
This was something older.
Something that didn't belong.
The ceiling of your world split apart with a sound that wasn't a sound at all. It was... wrong. Like creation itself had been forced backward for just a heartbeat. Every floor above yours ruptured open in succession, great circles of molten stone blasted outward as impossible radiance speared downward.
The warriors of Heaven had come.
A legion.
Not one.
Not two.
A whole fucking legion.
You'd heard stories from older demons-- those ancient enough to boast about the War before the Fall-- but stories were useless things.
No one had mentioned how big angels were.
Gigantic didn't begin to describe them.
Their true forms filled entire caverns, wheels within wheels crowned with burning eyes, wings stretching farther than your own vision could follow. They moved like living stars forced into impossible shapes, every beat of their wings scattering grace like molten sunlight.
Looking directly at them hurt.
Looking away somehow hurt more.
Hell, for the first time in your existence, felt...
...small.
The invasion lasted six Earth days.
Six days of heavenly battle cries.
Six days of demons screaming louder than the damned.
Six days of wings tearing through sulfur skies while grace vaporized stone and flesh alike.
Your superior-- the same one who never shut up about his glorious victories in the ancient rebellion-- was reduced to a black, smoking shape that landed beside you with a wet crack.
He didn't even have a face anymore.
You stared.
Then looked back up.
What was happening?
Why were angels here?
Why now?
After all these eons?
Had Heaven finally declared the end?
Or had they simply gone mad?
By the sixth day...
...everything became quiet.
Not silent.
Hell could never be silent.
But the thunder of battle had dwindled into distant echoes, the once-deafening chorus of angelic voices fading into little more than whispers carried through the smoke.
One by one, surviving demons emerged from whatever cracks they'd hidden themselves inside.
The clever ones.
The cowards.
The lucky.
They crept toward the torn edges of the shattered floors, peering cautiously into the abyss below.
You did the same.
At the very bottom...
...stood a single angel.
No.
Not stood.
Hovered.
His wings were spread wide, impossibly vast, layered in a black so rich it seemed to swallow the surrounding light rather than reflect it. They weren't burned. They weren't stained.
They were simply...
...black.
Glossy.
Beautiful.
You had never seen another angel closely enough to compare.
You didn't need to.
Something inside you knew this one mattered.
He stood before a man on his knees.
Dean Winchester.
He looked...
Nothing like the rumors.
The stories had described a monster.
A smiling butcher.
Azazel's masterpiece.
Instead you found a hollow shell.
His head hung limp, blond hair matted against his forehead, his body scarcely holding itself upright. Years-- 40 of them now-- of Hell had hollowed him from the inside out until he looked less alive than half the souls wandering the Pit.
The angel reached forward.
Grace shimmered, gathering into small, glowing hands that gently lifted Dean's face.
Not demanded.
Not forced.
Lifted.
The angel leaned close, speaking softly.
Too softly.
The words never reached you.
Dean blinked.
Slowly.
His unfocused eyes drifted upward, searching until they finally found the impossible shape towering before him.
His lips moved.
He whispered something back.
Whatever he'd said...
...it made the angel move.
Immediately.
One arm wrapped securely around Dean's waist, drawing the broken man against him. The other caught beneath his arm, steadying him with impossible care.
Then--
The wings opened.
The sound they made wasn't wind.
It was scripture given motion.
Every surviving demon on the surrounding floors surged at once.
"No!"
"Stop him!"
"Don't let him leave!"
The whispers exploded into chaos.
Demons poured over broken ledges, throwing themselves onto the angel in a frenzy. Ancient blades-- older than kingdoms, older than languages-- slashed through black feathers. Claws dug into burning eyes that lined impossible wheels. Teeth found purchase wherever grace became flesh enough to wound.
For every demon torn apart...
...two more took their place.
You didn't move.
You couldn't.
Pressed against the broken edge of the floor, you watched with something dangerously close to awe.
How lucky were you?
To witness an angel.
He was...
Beautiful.
Then the angel cried out.
The sound was beyond hearing.
It shook through your bones, through the stone beneath you, through every ugly thing Hell had ever made.
His wings beat once.
A hurricane of grace erupted outward.
Stone shattered.
Demons vaporized where they stood.
The unlucky weren't merely thrown back--
They ceased.
And with Dean Winchester held tightly against him...
Castiel rose.
You only saw him for a heartbeat.
A single instant.
Castiel tore upward through the broken wound in Hell, his wings eclipsing entire caverns as grace carved a path toward the surface. The hurricane he left behind threw demons into walls, ripped stone from the foundations, and forced you flat against the jagged ledge.
You looked up anyway.
Just once.
Just long enough.
The angel passed directly overhead, Dean Winchester cradled securely against his chest.
And for the first time in your existence...
...you saw a human.
Not a soul flayed until it forgot its own face.
Not a sinner twisted into something unrecognizable.
Not a vessel worn by a demon.
A human.
Dean's eyes were half-lidded, unfocused, exhausted beyond anything words could hold. His face was streaked with ash and dried blood, bruises blooming beneath skin so heartbreakingly alive it almost glowed against the endless black of Hell. Dirty golden hair caught the light of grace like threads of sunlight dragged somewhere they had never belonged.
Every rumor had failed him.
Not because they lied.
Because they hadn't lied enough.
No one had found words worthy of him.
No one had managed to explain what it meant to look upon something so impossibly... human.
You had spent your entire life surrounded by monsters pretending to wear faces.
Then, for the span of a single heartbeat...
...you saw the real thing.
And you finally understood why angels had invaded Hell.
Why a legion had descended.
Why thousands had been willing to burn into nothing just to keep one angel from leaving.
It wasn't until long after the hurricane of grace had faded, after the silence returned and the smoke settled over the broken Pit once more, that you realized something almost laughable.
Balphegor had been wrong.
Dean Winchester wasn't gorgeous by human standards.
Oh Dean. Spent years trying not to look too closely at what he felt. But some feelings don't disappear just because you refuse to name them. They just keep finding their way back.
Arthur Ketch is one of those characters where "I like him" gets mistaken for "I think he's a good person."
No.
He's awful.
He's manipulative, sadistic, and spent years as the British Men of Letters' attack dog. But that's exactly what makes him interesting. Arthur Ketch isn't compelling because he's redeemable-- he's compelling because he isn't, yet he still ends up developing very human cracks.
The thing with Mary Winchester is fascinating because it's so... inconvenient. She's not someone he was supposed to love. She's a liability, emotionally and professionally. Yet somewhere along the line, the guy who treated relationships like tactical assets starts imagining a real future with her. That's almost pathetic in the best way. He catches feelings like someone who's never been taught what to do with them.
And that tiny flicker of disappointment when Mary practically says, "It was just blowing off steam"? That's the entire character compressed into one expression. A man who can kill without blinking gets visibly wounded by one sentence.
Then, of course, there's the comedy.
The fact that this man got killed and his first idea was, "I'll just tell everyone I have a twin brother," is SO unserious. And the worst part? He committed to the bit with a completely straight face. He really pulled the oldest soap opera trick in history and somehow made it work. I hate this man. I love this man.
I never really shipped Ketch and Mary either. I just loved the irony of it. The coldest man in the room accidentally developing genuine feelings was far more interesting than if they'd actually become endgame. Sometimes the best romances are the ones that never really happen-- they just reveal something about a character you thought was incapable of feeling at all.
Also:
It's less "I genuinely ship them" and more "...goddammit, I see the vision."
Cz why the hell did Arthur Ketch have chemistry with Dean too? Dean is so greedy. Leave some emotionally constipated men for the rest of us.
Arthur looked at Dean for three business days and I literally went, "oh for fuck's sake, not another one." Dean Winchester is a magnet for deeply disturbed men. It's actually ridiculous at this point.
Dean's body count of men with unresolved feelings for him needs to be studied. I'm convinced every third man Dean meets either wants to fight him, die for him, or kiss him. Sometimes all three.
Dean really be collecting emotionally repressed middle-aged men like they're Infinity Stones.
At some point you have to stop blaming the fandom and start blaming Dean's face. Arthur Ketch catching feelings for Dean too would've been the least surprising plot twist on this show.
Dean collects men the way Sam collects trauma. It's a full-time job.
Every dude who meets Dean is one mildly traumatic experience away from being obsessed with him.
The emotional reaction ("why won't you stay with your sons?") and the psychological reading ("how could she possibly process this?") are both understandable.
From Dean and Sam's perspective? It's devastating.
They spent their entire lives building this impossible fantasy of their mother. Especially Dean Winchester. She wasn't just his mom, she was the symbol of the normal childhood he never got. Every sacrifice, every hunt, every nightmare traced back to the night she died. Then, after decades of grief, she's suddenly alive... and instead of running into his arms forever, she says she needs space.
To Dean, that probably felt like being abandoned all over again.
But then you flip the camera.
My toxic trait is empathizing with characters the fandom has collectively put on a hit list.
Mary didn't lose thirty years.
She lost one night.
She went to bed a twenty-something woman with a husband she adored, a four-year-old, and a baby. Then she wakes up in a future where her husband has been dead for decades, her children are strangers older than she remembers being, the world has completely changed, and everyone expects her to immediately become "Mom" again.
Except... Mom to who?
She never got to know these men.
She didn't watch Dean lose his childhood. She didn't raise Sam. She didn't witness their first words, first heartbreaks, or first hunts. Those memories don't exist for her. She isn't rejecting the boys she raised-- because she never got the chance to raise them.
That's a horrifying kind of grief. It's almost like everyone else remembers a life you never got to live.
So her burying herself in hunting, trying to reclaim some sense of identity, even sleeping with people, trying to feel like Mary instead of "the Winchester boys' dead mother"... psychologically, that tracks. It's messy. Sometimes selfish. But trauma often is.
I think where the writing loses people isn't that Mary wants independence. It's that the show doesn't always let us feel enough of her internal conflict. We see choices that hurt Dean and Sam, but we don't always sit with Mary's panic, disorientation, guilt, and mourning for the life that was ripped away from her. So viewers are left filling in those gaps themselves.
And that's why she's such a frustrating character.
Because if you watch with your heart, you're Dean.
If you watch with your head, you're looking at a woman who woke up after thirty years to discover she'd outlived her own life.
Neither perspective is wrong. They're just two tragedies colliding.
Also:
Many new mothers go through a period where they don't immediately feel deeply bonded to their baby, and that's far more common than people realize. Birth doesn't automatically flip a switch into overwhelming love for everyone. Recovery, exhaustion, hormonal changes, and sometimes Postpartum depression or Postpartum anxiety can leave a mother feeling detached, numb, or even resentful. Those feelings are usually temporary and don't make someone a bad mother-- they're a recognized part of the range of postpartum experiences.
For Mary, that idea fits because she died when Dean was still a toddler and Sam was an infant. She simply hadn't had the chance to build decades of memories and attachment with them before her life was cut short. That doesn't mean she didn't love them; it means the bond was interrupted before it could fully grow.
Crowley: "...burning through that rather finite supply of grace, all in a desperate effort to save your boyfriend."
Castiel: "Maybe he's your boyfriend."
That's not even subtext. That's just two middle-aged supernatural beings accusing each other of having a crush while Dean basically wrecked upstairs.
But then...
"Not my type."
Sir.
SIR.
If you have to physically walk towards the man, stop beneath the stairs, look up at him like you're contemplating every life decision that led you here, and then say "Not my type"... you've already LOST THE ARGUMENT.
Mark Sheppard has this incredible ability to act with his eyes. Crowley's expression so often lands somewhere between admiration, frustration, affection, and "I cannot believe this idiot is making me care." So even when the line is written as a joke, the performance can make it feel... suspiciously loaded.
It's also perfectly in character because Crowley spends an absurd amount of time orbiting Dean during the Mark of Cain arc. He's fascinated by him. He enables him, manipulates him, drinks with him, calls him "Squirrel," tries to recruit him, and seems genuinely disappointed every time Dean chooses someone else over him.
Is it canon romance? No.
Is it incredibly easy to read Crowley as having a one-sided, deeply inconvenient crush on Dean? ...Honestly, I get why people do.
And the funniest part is that "Not my type" is exactly the kind of thing someone says when they're trying way too hard to sound unaffected.
Crowley: "Not my type."
Also Crowley:
crosses continents to help Dean
keeps trying to make Dean his partner
stares at him like he's the last interesting creature on Earth
is visibly offended whenever Dean picks Team Free Will over him
Mark Sheppard really looked up those stairs and said, with his entire face, "Unfortunately, that man is the center of my problems," while his mouth insisted, "Nah."
The disconnect between the dialogue and the acting is what sells it.
Like not in the "the writers are trying to make her quirky" way. She's just... naturally adorable. That little smile she gets? The dry humor? The confidence? The way she'll absolutely throw herself into a hunt without making a big deal out of it? She's cool as hell and cute as hell, which is an unfair combination.
And with Sam Winchester... I don't know. They have that quiet kind of chemistry that doesn't scream for your attention. It just settles into your chest. They look at each other like two people who finally found someone speaking the same language, even beyond words.
They're both gentle people who've been through unimaginable amounts of loss. Neither of them needs to be the loudest person in the room. They understand grief, loneliness, and hope in a way that feels almost instinctive. Being together doesn't feel like they're completing each other; it feels like they've finally found someone who gets it.
And I adore that she never feels intimidated by Sam. She teases him, challenges him, works alongside him as an equal. Sam, meanwhile, has this softness around Eileen Leahy that's different from his other relationships. It isn't dramatic or obsessive-- it feels safe. Like he can unclench for the first time in years.
They're the kind of couple that makes you imagine the tiny things: brushing shoulders while cooking, signing "I love you" across a room, silently checking in with each other during hunts, stealing sleepy smiles over morning coffee.
Soulmates is exactly the word I'd use.
Not because fate said so.
Because if you scattered every person in the world into a thousand different lifetimes, I'd still believe Sam would eventually wander into Eileen's path, she'd give him one amused look, and somehow they'd end up finding their way home together.
For me, they're not just a good ship-- they're the ship. My only OTP too. They feel less like a romance someone wrote and more like two puzzle pieces that always belonged together; you don't notice the fit until they're side by side, and then you can't imagine them any other way. 🤍
