Dean echoed her laugh, though it was short and abrupt. He pulled his hand away and averted his eyes as she shook off her tears with a noticeably fake smile. Maybe she wasn't as good at it as he was, but he recognized exactly what that posturing was all about. Putting on the smiles, the jokes, whatever was necessary to shove attention off from her own feelings. He knew that was harder for her - it was just in the nature of both Claires - and he knew she was doing it for his benefit.
Claire might have had that extra scrap of hope to cling on to - some kind of purpose - but Dean was scrabbling to hold on to anything like that, after the events of yesterday. His already tenuous faith that God might save their asses was blown out of the water. His faith in his family? In Sammy, most of all?
Heaven had certainly been one hell of an eye-opening experience in terms of that. He could see now that even if they did find a way to get through this, that all his silent fears, the ones he hadn't allowed himself to even face, were legitimate and likely. Sam wouldn't want a goddamn thing to do with him, or mom and dad's memory, because all of that was bound up so tightly in all this supernatural shit. There was no escaping it so long as Sam kept Dean around. And Sam hated it, with every ounce of his being, and wanted out.
Which was as good as hating everything he'd ever had with Dean.
Dean felt so entirely disconnected from whatever had still been managing to ground him, that it was like being a balloon whose string had suddenly snapped. He could feel himself drifting further away from everything here, but he was powerless to stop it, and he knew that eventually the drifting was going to stop: eventually he'd just pop.
Claire's next words, however, tapped into something desperate inside of him, something he'd been shoving down and shoving down for far too long: that aching need to connect to something here. Lord knows he'd tried ever since Sylar pointed it out to him point-blank: he'd tried to reconnect with Sammy and bridge that ever widening gap between them. He'd tried to make friends, or allow people in as family - Sam's Claire, Bobby, hell, even Sylar. But Easter had proven just how ineffective that had actually been - he was still never going to be able to push past losing his own family. And Sam would never understand that.
He'd tried to connect to Elle, to tell her the truth and hope that would be enough. But it wasn't. He'd tried to connect to Brooke, but the truth still stood in between them.
Basically, he'd been doin' nothing but trying left and fucking right, and he still had nothing to show for it.
For the first time in awhile, he allowed himself to face up to the fact of where that left him: just plain fucking scared. Of what he was now. Of what he wasn't.
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Claire might have had that extra scrap of hope to cling on to - some kind of purpose - but Dean was scrabbling to hold on to anything like that, after the events of yesterday. His already tenuous faith that God might save their asses was blown out of the water. His faith in his family? In Sammy, most of all?
Heaven had certainly been one hell of an eye-opening experience in terms of that. He could see now that even if they did find a way to get through this, that all his silent fears, the ones he hadn't allowed himself to even face, were legitimate and likely. Sam wouldn't want a goddamn thing to do with him, or mom and dad's memory, because all of that was bound up so tightly in all this supernatural shit. There was no escaping it so long as Sam kept Dean around. And Sam hated it, with every ounce of his being, and wanted out.
Which was as good as hating everything he'd ever had with Dean.
Dean felt so entirely disconnected from whatever had still been managing to ground him, that it was like being a balloon whose string had suddenly snapped. He could feel himself drifting further away from everything here, but he was powerless to stop it, and he knew that eventually the drifting was going to stop: eventually he'd just pop.
Claire's next words, however, tapped into something desperate inside of him, something he'd been shoving down and shoving down for far too long: that aching need to connect to something here. Lord knows he'd tried ever since Sylar pointed it out to him point-blank: he'd tried to reconnect with Sammy and bridge that ever widening gap between them. He'd tried to make friends, or allow people in as family - Sam's Claire, Bobby, hell, even Sylar. But Easter had proven just how ineffective that had actually been - he was still never going to be able to push past losing his own family. And Sam would never understand that.
He'd tried to connect to Elle, to tell her the truth and hope that would be enough. But it wasn't. He'd tried to connect to Brooke, but the truth still stood in between them.
Basically, he'd been doin' nothing but trying left and fucking right, and he still had nothing to show for it.
For the first time in awhile, he allowed himself to face up to the fact of where that left him: just plain fucking scared. Of what he was now. Of what he wasn't.