Summary: 13.17/18 meta. Takes place sort of in between/during the episodes and is loosely based on promo pics we’ve seen. Sam’s been depressed this season. We’ve seen it in his behavior, but it’s not really being dealt with, so I’m dealing with it here.
Characters: Sam, Castiel
Word Count: 1.7k
Warnings: depression, breakdown
Sam puts one foot in front of the other, each step pounding on dirt that gives way under his running shoes. The leaves are too soft to crunch, but the twigs still snap. An early fall rain has dampened the trail he usually runs and the cool air flows into his lungs with sharpness. He feels alive with every breath, awakened to the sensations in his body. The tired ache in his thighs. The sweat dripping down over his right eyebrow. His t-shirt moving or sticking on his back depending on how the air flows. He feels things he’s trying to forget like the empty ache in his heart and the sadness hanging over his head. His morning run is supposed to be a distraction, but it has the alternative effect of making Sam acutely aware of everything going on in his body and mind. It’s mindfulness or whatever new age terminology they’re using now. Sam’s done research. He knows being aware of how he’s feeling is half the battle. People go around ignorant of their body’s signals, stuffing emotions and ignoring them, hoping through positivity they will change how they feel. They’re numb. Sam isn’t. He knows what he feels. He feels it deeply. He acknowledges it every day of his life. He doesn’t need mindfulness.
So I was just talking about how Sam’s reactions are often postponed, displaced, made indirect. But think about how that overlaps with the places where Sam is literally displaced from himself. Meg stole his body and mind and played out some of Sam’s deep fears about his darkness. It was, among other things, an intrusion into and disruption of Sam’s own grappling. And I’ve mentioned before that, so far from being excessively emotional, Sam’s anger about Gadreel is unnervingly rational and temperate. There are lots of reasons for that, but one of them may be that by the time Sam became aware of the possession, Gadreel had already played Sam’s reaction. By the time Sam actually had a chance to react as himself, he would have been able to remember Gadreel pretending to be Sam punching Dean, Gadreel pretending to be Sam saying “Maybe I would have liked the choice” (and how horrifying is it that that bid for agency in his own life was not Sam speaking at all, but the being who was using his tongue and the contents of his brain without his will or knowledge? that’s a whole lot of irony, there). If Sam just sounds emptied and exhausted when he’s finally aware and face-to-face with Dean at the end if 9.10, it’s partly because he’s bleeding out of holes in his brain, but it must also have been partly because he’s crucially belated: the immediacy of his response to what was stolen from him is one of the things that was stolen from him.
It’s no wonder Sam has trouble with direct, immediate reactions to his own experience.
I often wonder how much Sam dissociates on average.
Between depression, PTSD, constant retraumatizing events that impact his autonomy, and actually having his personality split three-ways (s6 finale, anyone?), Sam has to have some some hardcore dissociation skills.
And that goes with delayed emotional reactions.
Compartmentalizing trauma is a survival technique. It allows him to function each day with all these memories weighing him down. But eventually, that stops working or one of those carefully sealed “boxes” breaks open and all those issues pour out.
Movie posters allowing the audience to view of both the female characters’ chest and butt whilst male characters get to face the camera and be all “manly”….
And then there is
Sam. Fucking. Winchester!
Inpsiration from @deathpoolquinn
I’m honestly baffled the SPN fandom never discussed this. It was the first thing I noticed. Unless they discussed this in LiveJournal, I never had an account.
Oh now I remember why, they kept waiting for Sam to use the curvy knife.
Well, that fits with the “Sam=female storyline” thing SPN has had going on since the start. This pic has always seemed weird to me, but I couldn’t figure it out until I saw it against all those other posters.
Karate, SPN Demonic Octopus Guardian 