do you ever rewatch Lazarus Rising and rewatch the scene in the barn, and see Castiel for the first time, bursting in, all presence and power, and hear the line “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition” and get just overcome with emotion because this was the moment. it happened first when Castiel raised Dean, of course—“the moment he touched you in hell”—but to us this was the moment, that everything began in a flash of lighting.
how astonishing it is to look back and try to conceive of how they will go from this, strangers (except of course not really, not when Castiel knows so much, not when Dean’s soul burned hot and beautiful against his grace) standing apart in an abandoned place, to the entire everything they are now, to the so many things they are now. to the unlikely friends, best friends, lost friends, broken friends, fire-forged and reforged friends they have been, to the many friends they will be still. how astonishing it is that in the first sentence Dean says to Castiel he stabs him in the chest, but that four years later, even after catastrophe, he is the best friend he’s ever had.
