season 8 is crazy because while i get why they cut the “i love you” line and i don’t even dislike the “i need you” line, i wish they’d kept, “i forgive you,” because it’s like. you’re gonna kill me. i know you’re gonna kill me. please don’t hate yourself for it. please don’t carry it with you. don’t wonder if i forgave you. don’t wonder if i cared. you’re already forgiven. i love you.
and beyond that it’s just like… clearly dean does love cas! we see it all season. it’s new. its a new softness. it’s a post purgatory thing. i don’t think dean would have said any of this pre season 8. pre purgatory. he cared for cas. but he didn’t need him. and he didn’t love him. and when he went insane and tried to become god, he didn’t forgive him. not right away. he didn’t want to. he wanted to be angry. it ate him alive to be that angry. he had to realize slowly through that experience that he cared. deeply. so much so that by the time he’s in purgatory he’s not leaving without the angel! either they both get out or neither one does. forget fault. forget why this even happened. forget cas’s guilt. forget whatever is happening topside. forget sam and his grief. dean isn’t leaving him. end of story.
and then dean makes it out and cas … doesn’t. and dean is fucking bereft. he’s imagining cas everywhere. his longing is literally a tether, pulling cas to him in flashes until he is there for real. by the time cas is brainwashed and beating tf out of him dean loves him and has loved him but he KNOWS it. there’s no maybe. there’s no denying it, he doesn’t want to.
he doesn’t want cas to live with the pain of killing him, and he absolves him of that with what he thinks is his last breath. like… he’s dying!! it’s over!! but he forgives him, and he loves him, and he needs him to know.
