#s2x02

Domaystic 2025, May 18 prompt: Back to school

courtney went from doing the most to hide the fact that she was a lesbian in s1 to being in that court room like:  

You’re 100% right. Sam is sad in this ep and Dean does obviously read it. Look at his face here:

He’s so concerned for Sam. Dean’s back in the role of caretaker, and maybe that’s why he takes Sam out on a hunt, it’s what they fall back on when they need to shake off the introspective drama.

I think there’s a combination of things at play here. @neven-ebrez mentions it in this post and I think it’s legit that the lack of news on Mary is wearing him down. While Dean had his faith restored, Sam seems to be consistently having his torn away from him, particularly when he places it in other people. Maybe that’s the problem, because ultimately Sam isn’t putting faith in himself (or even in Dean, case in point he didn’t listen to Dean’s instinct about Ketch until it was too late).

Sam is entitled to be sad I think. He keeps getting his faith knocked. We’re coming off the end of an episode where Cas came back (and Sam has strong doubts about that even if he’s happy for Dean), but also an episode where we saw him begin to doubt Jack as Dean had. Just look at his face in the scene where Jack levitates the pencil. And then Jack kills a guy. Jack throws them to the ground and flies away. But not before a fight with far, far too much truth in it: Sam’s fear of Jack is part of why Jack leaves. Sam feels like a failure, like he messed up with this important world endingly dangerous job he took on for himself. Sam was the one who made using his power such a quality for Jack, something he should aspire to, and it ostensibly led to this, to a man dying and Jack blaming himself. So Sam’s perceived failure with Jack feeds back into undermining his own self belief (and the belief that he thinks Dean has in him as well, I think).

So it’s already pretty rough for him, and then Ketch comes along and Sam is once again wrong with his instincts. He flips to Dean’s side quickly enough, but it’s already too late, and I think we really, really have to see how Sam getting his faith knocked is going to come into the next few episodes, especially if they end up in the AU. 

But Mary. Sam misses Mary, and he missed his opportunity with her as he said, and what Sam has is absent parent figures. I just watches 2x02 which ends on Sam admitting that he misses John and missed the chance to have a good relationship with him. He feels guilty. Now here’s Mary and she and Sam don’t have the same past as Sam had with John, but Sam still struggles to bond with her, struggles to have a relationship with her, and she disappears before he can get what he needs out of it. It’s tragic. As Sam says back in 2x02 “I’m not okay”, and he is not okay now either.