AU where John Winchester loved his boys just a little bit less and put them up for adoption and they were raised in a healthy, functional home.
They’re good boys. Mischievous, too smart for their own good, scrappy, practically attached at the hip, but good boys. Dean had a hard time adjusting at first, nonverbal and nightmare-ridden from post-traumatic stress, prone to panic attacks when alone, but their adopted parents found the best child psychiatrist they could afford and in time he began to heal, began to break out of his shell. Even when he wasn’t talking his empathy was remarkable, and as he’s grown a whip-smart analytical intellect developed to supplement it.
Dean remembers their birth parents like looming figures seen through smoke, but Sam, Sam grew up in this life, and their adoptive family is the only one he’s ever known. He has a rebellious streak a mile wide and it frustrates no one in the world more than it does Dean (still prone to hovering over or trailing behind him with a dreamlike missive ringing in his ears like the last audible echoes of a scream – Look out for Sammy), but he’s smart and strong and driven, independent and devoted all at once. He has these fits at times, though, and Dr Margaret (now the family psychiatrist) calls them rage attacks but they feel like blisters of thick oil growing and bursting inside him from gut to teeth. Over time he learns to swallow them down til he can go somewhere quiet, like the creek where the brothers chased frogs barefoot and shot BBs at old cans, to give in to the festering dark where he can’t hurt anyone else. Everyone knows sweet, sweet Sammy is the one with the temper. It gets chalked up to adolescence but he knows damned well it’s always been this way and probably always will.
They love to spar. Dean’s fondness of sports shooting tapers off in favour of wrestling and team sports (he loves the rush and competition but not so much the hurting-people part), while Sam is kind of scary good at Krav Maga once he finds a trainer for it (the discipline does him good).
At eighteen Dean is buried in scholarship offers – engineering, business, sports, he has heart and brains and beauty enough that the sky’s the limit – but passes up the Big Important Offers for the chance to stay in town close to home. Maybe he’ll do MIT later on but he just wants to stretch out his time close to family as long as he can. That’s where he’s happy. That’s where he’s safe.
(And, Sam suspects, it might also have something to do with wanting to stay near that one friend he’s been so close to since junior high. He’s been placing bets with himself on when his brother will nut up and ask the guy out for years.)
He takes a summer job as a volunteer firefighter. He has a panic attack the first time he has to go in. Even though Dean’s too old to see Dr Margaret as a patient she helps him through it, helps him overcome, but he decides discretion is the better part of valour. The family supports him in quitting as much as they did when he took the job: “You already saved me from the fire,” Sam tells him, “you don’t have to prove anything.”
Two years later Sam cashes in on his bet. Mom and Dad are a little shocked but Eric’s been like a third son for so long that when he comes over for dinner with Dean and they’re lacing fingers together instead of trading playful punches it’s just another layer of family, just another kind of love.
One year later Sam nearly hyperventilates over his acceptance letter from Stanford. It’s a full ride though their parents would have put up all they could afford and help shoulder his loans even if it wasn’t. Dean’s heart breaks a little, but Sam’s joy is like wildfire and they promise to visit each other even though Palo Alto is so far away. They make good on it, trading off driving (Dean) or flying (Sam) on breaks, keeping tabs in email and, later on, Skype. Sam brings a girl home with him for Dean’s graduation. They all love Jess, of course, instantly, and she’s instrumental in talking Dean into going after his MSE after all. Dean starts placing bets with himself on how long it’ll take til she’s wearing a ring.
They were good boys, and they become good men. Stalwart, too clever for their own good, not so attached at the hip anymore but still close, still mischievous, but good men. Dean soaks up love and radiates it back into everything he does and everyone he knows. Sam harnesses the dark inside him and turns it into a driving passion to do good and right wrongs, and doggedly ignores the nightmares that seem to come out of nowhere – Jess is there to soothe him when he wakes. Neither of them are marksmen, neither have Latin chants memorised; they don’t fear the night or the fire, nor go looking for trouble in them.
So when Azazel comes for Sam six months after his twenty-third birthday none of them are prepared to put up a fight.
I don’t know if it’s the makeup or the lighting or just Jared’s spectacular acting, but that is the face of a truly otherworldly creature.
That is a very old soul.
And a not entirely benign one.
More, please.
Not to speak for @chiisana-sukima, but to me this relates to the ambiguity of Sam’s – well, forgiveness isn’t the relevant word here, though it certainly comes into play in the same nexus of issues – Sam’s distances from his own reactions. Sam as a person whose experiences have been unimaginably extreme, and who has accustomed himself to deliberately and/or unconsciously compartmentalize and minimize their effect on him in order to keep functioning, is a bit inhuman, because being shaped and affected by experiences is a human thing.
And that effect isn’t entirely benign, though it’s also not evil. It makes it hard for Sam to hold people accountable for what they do do to him, for one thing. The ability to experience physical and emotional pain is vital to survival, it’s a necessary warning system, and I think it’s also vital in social and relationship spheres, to keep the ethical reactions that shape how we treat each other dynamic. The fact that with Cole, for instance, “this is a person who tortured me” doesn’t seem to be part of their later interactions at all (and that’s an instance chosen almost at random) makes me terrified for Sam, but also a little bit terrified of him. Even when we see Sam very explicitly using his experiences, as in his dealings with Jack and his dealings with Dean on Jack’s behalf, Sam can’t seem to speak comfortably out of a place of experiencer of his own experiences, they’re something he lends to others, a kind of imaginary currency. Even when Sam does directly acknowledge pain, it often seems displaced somehow, if only temporally: his outburst about his distance from Mary is something that comes after the fact, that maybe could only exist in expressible form for him after the fact.
( @ameliacareful) Yeah, @denugis‘ take isn’t far off from mine, although mine is more about the anger part than the forgiveness part. But the alien-ness/bit of inhuman-ness, yeah. I was thinking he looks in that panel like he’s fae or a changeling- you know, not the disney kind of fairy, but the kind that steals children and drags them off to live in a dream and then returns them after all their loved ones are dead and buried. Which really, is pretty much what he was the victim of, except it was a nightmare and Dean and Cas are still alive (and Jody, but they mostly became friends after he returned. Does he have any other people left alive who he cared about before he went to Hell? I forget).
This is the same conversation where Sam tells Toni I was just wondering how far I’d have to walk to get back to town after I kill you. And her. But you first.That’s not even a threat exactly, although of course it *is* obviously a threat too. But like the panels above, it’s the same kind of contemptuous your bullshit human-level evil is beneath my regard, you’ll do your petty little thing, and then after i kill you in passing, i’ll go back to dealing with the gods. SPN doesnt show us this side of Sam very often, but I feel like when people say Sam is the scary one, this is what they’re talking about.
Yeah… we know the Clam Diver was “just outside” the town, which implies driving distance and not drunken stumbling distance. If Dean was so drunk that he couldn’t even make himself land on the bed and looked like he was lucky he managed to hit the floor… I mean, he got one shoe off and used it as a pillow.
If he was really that drunk, the bar wouldn’t have let him drive home. They would’ve called him a cab. Not to mention, aside from his tie headband and his shoe pillow, the rest of him looked relatively well put together (buttons buttoned neatly, coat on properly, etc.).
And did he really walk around the rest of the night wearing a pretty pink bra around his neck? Did he wear it to the liquor store where he bought that bottle? Did he wear it walking through the hotel? Because he was too drunk to care about his appearance in a town where he was pretending to be an FBI agent for a case where one boy was missing and another had been rendered mute by his experience?
And if Dean was really so drunk that he didn’t care about any of that, how did he end up in that spot on the floor without waking Sam up? Opening the door in the middle of the night, so drunk that he could barely stand up (and couldn’t even make it to the bed), and yet not so drunk that his stumbling and fumbling woke Sam up?
He was apparently messing with the TV remote as well? How? I mean… how did none of this apparent fumbling around the room not wake Sam up?
It’s like Dean was just tired of Sam pushing at him to just be “okay” again. Because Sam wasn’t really pushing Dean to be okay, he was pushing Dean to perform a specific version of Dean. Not because it would make Dean feel better, but because it would make Sam feel better about how Dean is coping.
Dean: I’m fine. Sam: Look, you’re not, Dean. You said you don’t believe in anything, and – and that’s not true, that’s not you. You do believe in things, you believe in people. That’s who you are, that’s what you do. I know you’re in a dark place and I just want to help. Dean: Okay. Look, I’ve been down this road before and I fought my way back, I will fight my way back again. Sam: How? Dean: Same way I always do: bullets, bacon, and booze. A lot of booze.
That’s what Sam needed Dean to be, to perform for him. To believe in something again, because yeah, Dean believes in people. He said it in 12.23:
DEAN: Yeah. You know, Cas has faith in this kid. SAM: Mm. DEAN: I hope he’s right. But me? I have faith in us. You, me, Mom, Cas. And Crowley. Sometimes.
But within an hour of that, 3/5 of the people Dean believed in were gone. And Sam’s now insisting that Dean just magically be okay with that, just let that go and just transfer all of that belief over to Jack, who Dean directly blames for the loss of the 3/5 people he believed in…
And now that giving Dean the “mission” to help teach Jack (with the hope that Jack might eventually be able to open the rift to fetch Mary again) has failed to help snap Dean out of his funk, Sam is desperate to at least get Dean performing the motions that used to signal his unhealthy coping skills.
Heartily pushing a beer on Dean at breakfast when he just wanted a sandwich, tolerating his music instead of complaining about it, ordering him food he’d normally complain about Dean eating, reading online reviews of a strip club to recommend it to Dean when he typically avoids strip clubs himself, buying Dean hair of the dog. It’s annoying to Dean, but after his display in the motel room, when Sam hands him that bottle, he forgives Sam.
What does he forgive him for? For pushing him to just be okay when he just wanted to be left to grieve in his own way.
Notice Sam doesn’t push him again after that.
Notice also that Dean never drank either breakfast beer.
Sam: You okay? Dean: No. Sam I’m not okay, I’m pretty far from okay. You know my whole life, I always believed that what we do was important. No matter what the cost, no matter who we lost. Whether it was Dad or Bobby or… and I would take the hit. But I kept on fighting because I believed that we were making the world a better place. And now Mom and Cas and I – I don’t know. I don’t know. Sam: So you don’t believe anymore. Dean: I just need a win. I just need a damn win.
Exactly the mental state Dean had diagnosed Cas with in 12.19. In the past, he’d still had Sam to believe in, the two of them against the world. Just fighting for Sam isn’t enough for him anymore. Something is different this time, and Dean doesn’t feel like he should have to perform the emotional labor to keep up a false front of coping for Sam anymore.
Like twig!Tasha told him in 12.20:
TASHA: Yeah. Family’s always complicated. Parents always see smart and strong and perfect. It’s only when you grow up that you realize that they’re just people.
Sam is finally seeing that Dean is just a person. Not that Sam had ever had illusions about Dean being perfect or whatever, but that act of always believing they could push through anything and come out the other side again isn’t the truth, and has never fully been the truth.
Heck, I’m watching 1.09 in the background while I write this up. And it wasn’t even the truth way back then… Dean kept up the “everything will be fine” act in front of Sam, essentially hid out behind a gas station and made his emotionally charged plea to John for help in the scene we’ve been paralleling to his prayer to God in 13.01.
In 2.04, Sam confronted Dean yet again on how badly he was handling John’s death, after the case they stumbled over while Sam visited Mary’s grave. I mean, THEEEEEMES. Dabb is pulling all of these themes from early seasons, and standing them all on their heads. Because in 2.05, after Dean had spent weeks putting up a front for Sam, the truth is forced out of him by psychic manipulation:
Dean: We hunt demons. Andy: What? Sam: Dean! Dean: Demons and spirits. Things your worst nightmares wouldn’t even touch. Sam here, he’s my brother… Sam: Dean, shut up! Dean: I’m trying. He’s psychic. Kind of like you. Well, not really like you, but see, he thinks you’re a murderer, and he’s afraid that he’s going to become one himself, ‘cause you’re all part of something that’s terrible. And, I hope to hell that he’s wrong, but I’m starting to get a little scared that he might be right.
Dean had buried all of this and kept it from Sam, much the same way Sam had buried some things that were pushed out in the open by another psychic manipulation (by a creepy ghost of a psychiatrist at an asylum, conveniently enough)… in 1.10:
Sam: That’s the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I’m not pathetic, like you. Dean: So what are you gonna do, huh? Are you gonna kill me? Sam: You know what, I am sick of doing what you tell me to do. We’re no closer to finding Dad today than we were six months ago. Dean: Well, then here. Let me make it easier for you. Come on. Take it. Real bullets are gonna work a hell of a lot better than rock salt. Take it!! You hate me that much? You think you could kill your own brother? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger. Do it!
Sam did it. But just like Dean brushing off the confessions Andy pulled out of him after the fact because it had been coercion, Sam brushed off what he’d said in that asylum, too.
Now in s13, Sam is asking– nay, begging– Dean to just brush this off again, to fake it ‘til he makes it, and Dean is saying no.
It’s honestly the healthiest damn way they’ve ever reacted in a situation like this.
I have no idea how I turned this ask into actual meta, but here you go.
For starters, there are way too many similarities between her and Sam for them to just be two random people who met by accident. They both lost someone recently and they’re both running away and they both just happen to be staying at the same motel?
Yeah ok, so she’s staying at the motel because she apparently works at the nearby animal clinic, but as someone who’s had questionable housing situations, not many places consider a motor inn a valid living address when you’re looking for employment. Sure, she probably could’ve gotten a job at a grocery store or a gas station, but as a veterinarian? Not likely. A vet gets paid on average $85k per year and a normal orientation in a new workplace is 2 weeks to a month. You think any sane employer is just gonna sign up a lady who rolled into town and is staying at a motor inn, and might decide to just drive out of town tomorrow? I mean come on.
Also, the dog he hit couldn’t have been a gray hound or a husky or idk, a german shepherd? It had to look like Bones? It’s like Sam pulled that dog out of memory and then just gave him different coloring. And he hit this dog with a 1967 fucking steel box traveling how fast? But this miracle vet lady saved the dog and it was hopping around like 24 hours later with a little cast on its leg?
Never mind the whole thing with the picnic and Amelia sitting on a blanket which is a mirror image of Dean’s fantasy of Lisa.
Like every single part of that story seems like something Sam could’ve dreamed, including Amelia’s disapproving army father who Sam has to spend hours sucking up to.
And then, her husband just miraculously appears just as Dean has found a way to crawl back out of purgatory?
How about the fact that Sam was not actually connected to the world the entire time he was with her. Sam, who freaked the fuck out because he hit a dog, decided to just completely ignore dozens of phone calls from Kevin? Never even check his messages? Never contact any of the other hunters? Never crack a book to at least try and figure out if Dean was dead or alive? Never attempt to summon any demons or angels for questioning? This Sam?
Pls.
Sam had a mental breakdown. There was no dog. There was no Amelia. It all happened in his head. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
This is a really satisfying theory! And we (the viewers) would never know because Sam himself doesn’t know. This would be an incredibly cool concept to explore next season, given the fact that we know there’s going to be a “can’t hide from your past” vibe.
Oooohhhh….I just really like this a lot…..
Also, Dean has never met or even SEEN Amelia, and Sam was just completely crazy and seeing Lucifer and things that weren’t there. Cas may have fixed Sam’s wall, but it’s still covered in scars from where it originally shattered, and there’s still lingering effects, Sam is still a bit crazy with tons of PTSD and trauma, made worse when he finds out his brother (and Cas) is suddenly just GONE and he’s all alone.
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