i wish there was more meta on the fact that dean was Clearly and actively suicidal during moriah. like he was in such a crisis mode thinking he had caused jack to lose his soul (and therefore caused mary's death), was resigned to the fact that he'd have to be a killer and kill his own son, was drinking a Lot and cornering himself before leaving to do it, heard about the equalizer killing the person who shot the gun and volunteered to be the one to die. i think there's just some juicy stuff there
Ah. Yes.
He loses his self.
MICHAEL: "I own you."
///
He loses Jack.
DEAN: "How could you ever, ever let anyone go through what you went through? The pain of losing a kid? "
///
He chokes in battle with the spear.
MICHAEL: "To break him, to crush and disappoint him so completely that, this time, he'll be nice and quiet for a change -- buried. And he is. He's gone."
///
He builds himself a coffin.
Billie convinces him to build a Ma'lack box for himself. He resolves to keep his suicide a secret.
DEAN: "Okay, well, yeah, that’s because I’m not good with the whole big goodbyes, alright? I-I-I don’t need to get shaky on this thing."
///
He chokes again.
The combined efforts of Mary, Sam, and Cas convince Dean to hang on, but he fails.
AW hunters die. Rowena Tries to Take on What Dean Couldn't, then SUFFERS and almost dies
And finally. Jack Takes on What He Couldn't.
MICHAEL: "If only Dean had used that coffin when he had the chance."
///
He was in the bargaining phase of grief.
Hopeful, but talking to Jack sideways, through euphemisms about the "snake" needing to eat. (People with souls eat. He's relieved when Jack opens a packages and hopes so so hard, Jack will eat too.)
DEAN: "Well, anyway, you and the, uh, snake want to go for a little dri-ive?"
///
He knows something's up with Cas missing family game night.
It gets a partnership betrayal motif, more on the nose than even the shady financey-business dealings codings of past: "giving a woman jewelry."
MARY (startled at Dean's shout): What— JACK: I thought this was supposed to relax him.
///
He ignores his gut about Jack interrogating Nick.
DEAN: "What do you mean, 'I mean?' [No! He's always a threat!]"
///
Sam almost dies.
DEAN: He got him in the head. I don't even want to move him.
///
Mary dies.
At first, he expresses worry for Jack primarily bc of Nick-as-threat, and he's "sure that Jack is safe with Mary."
DEAN: Dean: I did it, too. When I talked to Donatello about Jack, he said he was good as far as he could tell. But then he talked about how powerful Jack was and that he could never really be sure. And it was a warning. I just couldn't see it.
///
Jack expresses no remorse, and that's when Dean is sure His Jack is dead too.
JACK: She kept talking about my soul, t-that I didn't have a soul, and she kept pushing. [...] I didn't want this no-soul thing to become an issue between us. I guess I snapped. Before I knew it, it was all over.
///
So, Jack climbs into the coffin Dean originally built for himself.
DEAN: "I wish I could forget about him! After what he did?"
I'm sure it's on his mind, how Jack is dead in spirit because he choked re: Michael over and over. Jack took that on, and now he's inheriting Dean's coffin, too.
///
It's the least Dean can do, really.
To be the one to do it. To join him.
CHUCK: So, this doesn't so much fire bullets as it sends a wave of multi-dimensional energy across a perfectly balanced quantum link between whoever's shooting it and whoever they're shooting at. Uh, whatever happens to the person you're aiming at also happens to you. So you kill him... DEAN: (clicks the magazine into the gun) You die [too].
The future is already gone.
