destiel-destiny:

Dean: Let me see those.

2014!Cas: You want some?

Dean: Amphetamines?

2014!Cas: It’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe.

(Supernatural 5x4 - “The End”)

In this conversation, Dean asked 2014!Cas about why he used those “amphetamines” drugs in which 2014!Cas replied that “it’s the perfect antidote to that absinthe”.

There’re 3 facts you need to know in this conversation:

• First, amphetamines is a psychostimulant drug to increase wakefulness and focus association with decreased fatigue and appetite. In other words, its usage is likened to coffees or energy drinks so that you could concentrate to stay awake and alert on the task when you’re so fucking tired, hungry and sleepy as hell.
• Second, 2014!Cas said the drug is the “antidote”, meaning the cure, the medicine for his current “high” state which somewhat was caused by “that absinthe”. In other words, his words implied that Cas did try the absinthe before, at any point of time. 
• Third, 2014!Cas said the drug is the “perfect” antidote. His words were chosen carefully. The word “perfect” means that he had to try other trials over and over to cure that absinthe and only concluded that amphetamines was “the perfect antidote”. It also means that Cas had used absinthe not once, but over and over.

Now then, let’s me ask a question, “do you know about absinthe?” except the obvious fact that it’s bad for the health.

Absinthe is historically described as an highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from botanicals, including the flowers and leaves of grand wormwood, together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs.

Absinth traditionally has a natural green colour, referred to in historical literature as “la fée verte” means “Green Fairy” or “Green Devil”.

This liquor was loved by artists in the late 19th and early 20th century such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, Lautrec,  Oscar Wilde, Hemmingway, etc.

Absinthe has its own special cup and spoon.

When you add cold water, its color will change from green to musky white. It has a very strong tatse and a unique flavor. It’s to die for once you fall in love with it.

However, it contained a neurotoxin called thujone. It’s almost 100 years since the French Goverment banned its production and sales in 1915.

Recently, the ban on absinthe was lifted and it’s no longer contains any more neurotoxin.

(Sources from Wiki)

The fact is among all kinds of drugs and liquors that Ben Edlund could choose for 2014!Cas to be “high” and to be cured by ”amphetamines” in that episode, he chose absinthe, the liquor whose characteristic, in my humble opinion, unmistakably seemed to remind Cas of Dean.

Dean and his green eyes. Dean and his unique and mysterious flavor. Dean and his own special instruments to be raised from perdition. The Dean whose eyes had been green in warmth, bravery and kindness in 2009, after adding “cold water” (losing-Sam-to-the-devil), changed into a cold, bitter and despair man that was no longer the man Cas used to know in 2014. Well, metonymically, Cas could be the sugar cube on top only to be melt down into the green liquor into the musky white one.

Dean was the “absinthe” alcoholic drug that brought forth both the aphrodisiac of bliss and the poison of misery to Castiel. 2014!Cas knew it’s harmful for the health, but he couldn’t help but addicted to it. 2014!Cas would want nothing more than to be drunk in it and get high. It’s to remind him of his desire for Dean. Because, once you fall in love with it, it’s to die for. So was Dean. Once Cas fell in love with Dean, then it’s for Dean that he would go to his death.

“I like past you.” 

It made me think that when Cas drank absinthe, he liked to it raw in the “green” color liquor rather adding water and saw the liquor changed its color into “musky white”. Of course, that wasn’t the right way for normal human to drink absinthe, but Cas, however, wasn’t a normal human. He went mortal, but he’s still a fallen angel (sans the wings) in my eyes.

Because Cas, after all, was an artist at heart whereas all of scriptures, gospels and literature were once seared in his brain. Everything of Cas had done was nothing but artistic and metaphoric: his hippie lifestyle as a mortal with drugs and orgies, his adopted clothing style like Dean with jeans and jacket, his carefully chosen “insouciant”  words, his preference to “past”  Dean than his “current”  Dean, his choice of “absinthe”  alcohol and its perfect antidote, and his utmost important choice at all, “of course, I’m coming”  (to his death) when his  Dean called.

It’s Cas’ acceptance of his fate was to follow Dean’s till THE END. In the apocalypse world of no choice, Cas made it up as he went. When 2014!Dean asked, “Are you coming?”, he concurrently also gave 2014!Cas the choice for him to come or to stay. Ben Edlund kept pressing the hard fact of Cas’ choice was for Dean. Ben subtly wrote it as 2014!Dean knew that too because he asked whether Cas were “coming” with him (in Dean’s language means “die with me now”) instead of whether Cas was “staying” here or “die without me later.”

Cas chose to come, as always. That’s how he rolled.

There’s a famous cocktail called “Death in the afternoon” made up of absinthe and champagne invented by Hemmingway.

The cocktail shares a name with Hemingway’s book about bullfighting called “Death in the Afternoon”.

The book reads, “The only place where you could see life and death was in the bull ring.” Hemmingway compared “absinthe” to “death” and “champagne” to life. “Death in the afternoon” probably described that nervous moment between life and death.

So reading is fundamental. Metaphorically, when 2014!Cas drank absinthe, he drank “Dean” and “death” together and it was his choice. It was his last night on Earth and all 2014!Cas wanted was to get high in “absinthe” so much that he had to use “amphetamines” to sober himself up. He wanted to be drunk in the liquor that represented for “Dean”. You can make the connection. There’re a lot of off-screen scenes which were untold in The End.

In literary symmetry, 2014!Cas’ death was really happened in the daytime along with with 2014!Dean’s. You want to bet that was his ”death in the afternoon”.

I want to express all of my appreciation to the geniusness of Ben Edlund, Lord of Destiel, for writing this brilliant episode. You shouldn’t have to kill me with feels so early in the morning like this. I wish I knew how to quit you. But I made myself sad after such discovery.

Lastly, if you think nothing about “The End” could hurt you worse after reading it, you’re about to feel like the worst when you realized that Castiel, the angel of Thursday, was died on Thursday.

I did the timeline check and I cried and drown myself in the pool of tears.

On the first day, when Dean was zapped into the future, it was daytime when he ran away from the Croats and the armies.

On the same day, at night, Dean broke through the fences. The city-sign said August 1st, 2014.

Then Zachariah appeared in the car which Dean was driving. The newspaper Zachachariah shows him says Monday, August 4th, 2014 instead.

Zachariah: Three days, Dean. Three days to see where this course of action takes you.

So I concur that the date of the 2014 future that Dean was zapped is on Monday, August 4th, 2014. Because you couldn’t just zap people on the 1st day of the month but showed them the newspaper of the 4th day. So when Zachariah meant “3 days”, he meant the next “3 days” of “August 4th” that is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Hence, in the 2014 apocalypse future, 2014!Cas and 2014!Dean died on August 7th, 2014.

August 7 is Christian Feast Day, the early Christian custom of annual commemoration of martyrs on the dates of their deaths.

The earliest feast days of saints were those of martyrs, venerated as having shown for Christ the greatest form of love, in accordance with the teaching: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

That was the day Cas laid down his life for his friend, Dean and greater love has no one than this.