ariadnes_string

Supernatural begins with a reunion. And the intensity and rightness of Sam and Dean coming together again sometimes allows us to forget how hemmed in and haunted that reunion is by previous abandonments: by Sam's departure for Stanford, of course, and by John's deliberately mysterious disappearance, which, after all, occasions the events of the Pilot. Not to mention Mary's and then Jess's deaths.

But not very often: S1 is shadowed by the possibility that Sam will leave Dean to return to "normal life"; S2 ends with Sam's departure into death--so unbearable it lasts less than an episode; and S3 almost sinks under the tension of waiting for Dean to be dragged off to Hell.

S4, though, has flirted with the possibility of a different kind of leave-taking, one not occasioned by self-sacrifice, mortality or supernatural intervention, but by the personal--worse, moral--incompatibility of the Winchester brothers. Or by the exhaustion of a relationship strained to the breaking point by secrets and evasions. It's a possibility neither canon nor fanon has been very comfortable with: twice already this season (in "Metamorphosis" and in "The Monster at the End of the Book"), we've seen Dean drop his packed duffel on a motel chair: not ready--not ready yet--to leave his brother.

Who knows if we're going to see the Bros. Winchester actually split up sometime during the last few episodes of the season, but, in the meantime, here are three stories that beautifully, economically, take up the possibility of leaving.

Dead Dogs and Other Urban Myths by