An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
It goes like this. Dean Winchester is the opposite of her sister, racy and witty and quick and good, where Sam is modest and dull and halted and evil. She raises her sister anyway, teaches Sam to stitch her up in the backseat, to defy their father in every way that doesn’t matter. When Sam threatens to leave, eyes smudged with eyeliner and regret, plastic plates rattling in their shelves, Dean smirks because she knows that it’s the truth.
Sam Winchester has time. Her older sister doesn't, and so she watches her get ripped apart. She is scared that it might be her instead of hellhounds, that something has suddenly burst, bubbled over. Everything is confusing, but time is up, wasted, and Dean is laying in a pile of blood, eyes green against the carnage.
Castiel knows that Dean is terrified and hurt. She built her from nothing, formed eyes and ears and teeth, an echo of the original, scars and crooked bones. She had held Dean's heart in her hands, beating. When she stands in front of the Dean who thinks of her as a stranger, it is like looking into a mirror. She wonders if God ever gets tired of this, of creating. This is how it goes.
