Supernatural 4.21 When The Levee Breaks

"The Apocalypse being nigh, and all, is now really the right time to be having this little domestic drama of ours?"

Wow. This is an amazing episode, powerful and intense and enormously painful to watch, as a season-long arc winds up to a crescendo and explodes.

The script is beautifully written, and is especially impressive considering the circular structure it employs; in essence, the entire episode is little more than one long argument in which nothing is ultimately resolved, and yet it is absolutely riveting throughout, exploring the thought processes, motivations and emotions of each character in loving and intense detail.

Having had little or no insight into Sam's head throughout the show's run, it is especially valuable to be provided with such richness of insight now, as he nears rock bottom of that dark and slippery slope he has been sliding down all season. His hallucinations provide the perfect device for exploring his tortured subconscious, demonstrating his inner turmoil and conflict in agonising detail as he argues around and around in circles with himself, exploring his tangled motivations, justifications and validations in depth. What we ultimately learn from this process is that beneath that hard and ruthless façade he wears these days, the Sam we once knew still remains, hurt and confused, angry and disillusioned, a lot less certain of the path he has chosen than he pretends to be or is willing to admit, even to himself, but as stubbornly resolute in his determination to see things through as he has ever been, for better or for worse.

It is in some ways perhaps a little disappointing, for those who wanted to see a truly dark Sam, that his walk on the dark side this season has boiled down to such a literal, physical addiction, rather than a study of the corruption that comes with power, as that external influence diminishes Sam's level of personal responsibility for his actions. It was, of course, a very conscious decision that he initially made to start drinking demon blood, but once a physical need for it had developed the line between choice and compulsion becomes murkier. However, choosing to play his storyline this way means that a full recovery is rather more possible than if his actions were truly and fully autonomous, and for that I am extremely grateful!

Then

Lilith was trying to break 66 Seals to free Lucifer from hell, so that he could bring the Apocalypse.

Dean and Sam encountered Mary's spirit at their old house in Lawrence, and she apologised to Sam. Azazel dripped demon blood into Sam's mouth as an infant. Fourteen-year-old Sam protested that for once he didn't want to be the freak; that he wanted to be normal.

Castiel warned Dean that his brother was headed down a dangerous road. Dean railed against Sam for using his demon-given powers, pointing out how far from normal and human he was becoming, but Sam continued down that dangerous road regardless, drinking Ruby's blood to boost his powers.

When Ruby failed to return Sam's calls he found himself struggling, his powers failing him, in need of a boost. In Ruby's absence, he lost control and drank blood from a defeated demon in full view of both Dean and Castiel.

Dean and Bobby staged an intervention, locking Sam up in Bobby's panic room to detox from the demon blood.

Now

Panic room

The ceiling fan above the giant devil's trap spins sluggishly beneath a blazing sun. This image recurs throughout the episode, subtly adding to the oppressively claustrophobic atmosphere in the cast iron panic room.



Down below, Sam mooches around the room in abject disbelief that his brother and their good friend would lock him up like this. The room has been all but stripped bare, further proof that Dean set this up with Bobby before getting into the car to drive the unsuspecting Sam there. The bed is practically the only stick of furniture left in the room – although, by the way, I love that they have so thoughtfully provided Sam with an old bucket alongside it, in case of need.



Outside, Dean opens a peephole in the door and Sam spins around. "Okay. Let me out," he demands, a note of desperation in his voice. "This is not funny."

"Damn straight," Dean grimly agrees, wearing his hardest, blankest, scariest expression, the one he always plasters on when he has to do something that he really, really hates. Sam has become a very big problem and Dean has to treat him as such, no matter how much it hurts, has to step aside from the pain of seeing his brother like this and do what he believes has to be done to resolve the problem, even if Sam hates him for it – even if he hates himself for it. Saving Sam from himself is what matters right now, matters much more to Dean than his brother's right to do as he wishes with his own body, however harmful – not least because what Sam is doing could be potentially dangerous to far more than just himself.



Sam comes over to the door, where he is lit up red by the emergency light just above his head, and it is all kinds of symbolic, speaking of blood and fire and passion and hell. The contrast with Dean, standing in shadow but with a fluorescent directly above him, is very effective, the white light cold and harsh, speaking of implacable resolve while also suggestive of purity. Yeah, nice one, Show – we see what you did there!



The use of the door as a barrier between the brothers is also nicely symbolic, especially allied with the way that the tiny peephole means that that neither brother can see the other fully, only a part of their faces visible at a time – here Sam's mouth, there Dean's eyes – and it is all tremendously emblematic of their lives in general just lately. The door divides them physically now, but the division between them goes back a lot further than that. It started the day Dean died. Here, Sam can't open the door and Dean won't open the door, where in real life Dean couldn't and Sam wouldn't bridge the divide. And that tiny window of insight they have into one another just is not enough for either to understand what is going on in the other's head.

Eyes all lit up with almost manic desperation, Sam spits that this is crazy, but Dean just shakes his head and insists that he is not letting Sam out of that room until he dries up.

It's all incredibly twisted and painful, because Dean is here very physically taking control of Sam's life – indeed his very being – completely out of his brother's hands, when having control over his own life and destiny has always been of such vital importance to Sam, something that matters to him more than almost anything else. Their conflicting desire for control over Sam has been an ongoing source of tension between the brothers for years now, Sam's innate craving for independence constantly warring with Dean's need to be needed and to keep his loved ones safe. Until now Sam has always had the upper hand because it was his body – no matter what Dean said, Sam could always trump him by just walking away and doing what he wanted to do regardless. But now, by taking away Sam's liberty, Dean has wrested control back out of his brother's hands, implying quite explicitly that Sam can no longer be trusted to look after himself, that by his actions, since there is no telling how severely the demon blood has affected his ability to judge, he has forfeited the right to choose his own path, forcing Dean to assume guardianship over him.

This simple device, forming the basis of this episode, takes that central source of conflict between the brothers and ramps it up to a whole new level, and it is that simple, basic argument – Sam's need for independence versus Dean's need to protect – that underlies the entire episode, in effect. That central argument repeats on a loop throughout, with each brother stating the case for both prosecution and defence, as he sees it. Yet although the conflict throughout is brother versus brother, they only actually converse with one another, face to face, in the first and last scenes of the episode!

Sam at first reacts with furious indignation, but quickly bites it back and tries for a more measured approach, and it is so very much the angling of an addict searching for the right line that will get him what he wants it hurts. "Look, I'm sorry," he offers. "I shouldn't have lied to you. Just…open the door."



Maybe he means the apology. Maybe he doesn't. The bottom line is that you cannot trust the word of an addict. Sam has lied to get what he wants before, too many times to be trusted now.

Dean shakes his head. "You don't have to apologise," he says in a voice that is at first far, far too calm and only just avoids shaking, then positively drips with bitterness as he fiercely adds, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault that you lied to me, over and over again. I get it now. You couldn't help yourself –"

"I'm not some junkie!" Sam furiously protests, and I like that the trigger for this angry protest, having previously attempted to appear calm and reasonable in support of his claim to rationality, is the insinuation that the blood is controlling him rather than him controlling his own thoughts and deeds. Sam needs to believe that he is in full and complete control of everything he has chosen to do.

"Really?" Dean lifts a sceptical eyebrow. "I guess I just imagined how strung out you've been lately."

"You're actually trying to twist this into some kind of ridiculous drug intervention!" Sam laughs, and that steadfast refusal to admit that he has a problem is classic for any addict – whatever the nature of the addiction, almost without an exception they all tend to behave like this when their habit is challenged. The comparison between Sam's reaction to his situation, both physical and psychological, and the behaviour of a more traditional drug or alcohol addict adds rather an earthy, gritty twist to what is an extremely supernatural problem.



"If it smells like a duck," shrugs Dean, which…what? What does that even mean? Way to mangle yet another expression, Dean!

So, Dean is putting the blame for Sam's attitude and actions squarely on the blood, rather than blame Sam himself. It is much easier to blame something external than to think that Sam chose this.

"Dean, I'm not drinking the demon blood for kicks," Sam insists, but he is using rather a patronising tone again, one he has used quite often around Dean in recent episodes, a tone that is both snide and supercilious. "I'm getting strong enough to kill Lilith."

"Strong?" Dean snorts, and Sam says yes, that's it. "That's about as far away from strong as you can get," Dean objects, and he is right – addiction, in general, is most definitely not a sign of strength. Overcoming it is, though. "Try weak. Try desperate – pathetic."



Ooh, ouch. What is fascinating here is that Dean is flinging back at Sam the exact condemnation that Sam hurled at him during their confrontation in Sex and Violence, while under the siren's spell. Weak. Pathetic. Sam said that about Dean because he was struggling to deal with the memory of breaking under torture in hell, and it was immensely hurtful and damaging to hear – yet all the while Sam was doing this to himself, succumbing to an addiction to demon blood, of all things, and now seeks to claim it as strength. No wonder it rankles. It's also interesting because throughout season three Dean kept telling Sam that he was the stronger of the two of them, only for Sam to turn that statement against him this season, when this wasn't what Dean meant, this was never what Dean meant. He had believed that Sam was strong enough not to ever do something like this.

"Killing Lilith is what matters," Sam insists. He always was single-minded, even before he could claim the Apocalypse as justification. "Or are you so busy being self-righteous you forgot about that?" he adds, and that is also classic behaviour for an addict, turning the situation around onto others rather than look to themselves, always justifying, always attacking. And his justifications, taken at face value, sound fairly reasonable, plus, since he has been locked up, his anger is understandable. But the tone – man, it's vicious. Dean isn't being self-righteous. He isn't claiming to be better or stronger than Sam. He is, however, expressing very deep disapproval of and distress over what Sam has done to himself and believes that the course of action he has chosen to deal with it is right.

Trouble is, of course, Sam also believes that he is right. He believes his goal of killing Lilith is important enough to justify anything and everything he has done, even if is costs his very soul.

Dean drops his head and shakes it in that way he does when he can't quite believe what he's hearing. "Oh, Lilith's going to die," he assures his brother. "Bobby and I will kill her. But not with you."

"You're not serious," Sam seethes.

"Too bad, Sammy," Dean breathes, voice little more than a whisper, all choked up with emotion as he reaches the limit of his tolerance for this painful conversation. "You just bought yourself a bench-warmer seat to the Apocalypse."

He closes the peephole again and walks away, determinedly ignoring Sam's furious shouting and banging on the door.

With Sam's yells echoing down the hallway, Dean slowly, tiredly ascends the stairs – from the darkness underground and the persona hell in which Sam is entombed to the warmth and light of life above ground, again so terribly symbolic.



Near the top he stops and listens to Sam's furious shouts, pain and despair flooding his face now that Sam can no longer see and he no longer has to worry about keeping up appearances.



Titles

Panic room

Left alone with nothing better to do than think about how long it has been since he drank any demon blood, Sam sits on the edge of the bed and jitters, gazing around the room with increasingly blurred vision, clutching at his head, sweaty and shaky and shivery.

The way this episode uses the device of Sam going through withdrawal to explore his psyche via hallucinations is absolutely fascinating. It is truly powerful stuff, beautifully written and executed. However, I can't help wondering just why Sam goes into such total withdrawal almost immediately after being locked up in the panic room. Dean brought him straight here after the events of The Rapture, in which Sam took advantage of a defeated demon to provide himself with a sizeable hit of demon blood. It surely can't have taken more than a day or two at the most to get to Bobby's place from wherever they were. Before drinking from that demon Sam had gone weeks without a proper hit, other than what little blood he was able to store in his hip flask, and although the withdrawal was beginning to affect him toward the end, he never displayed symptoms such as we see here.



We can project these events back upon The Rapture and reason that if Sam felt himself reaching this point of desperation and debilitation, his loss of control when he drank from the demon in public becomes more understandable. However, it still doesn't explain the coincidence of him going into such full and extreme withdrawal almost as soon as he is locked up, despite having had a very recent hit of blood.

Sam jumps up as if he's just thought of something he could do in this completely empty room, but wobbles badly the moment he's on his feet and has to take a moment to regain his balance before striding purposefully to the door in order to futilely wrestle with the handle for a moment. It is all to no avail, since the door remains just as securely locked as it was the last time he checked.

Giving up, he pouts his way back to the centre of the room, where he stops short upon seeing a puff of condensed air exiting his mouth – something he recognises as the sign of a haunting. Alarmed, he looks up to see the light flickering and starts to yell. "Guys! Get down here, something comin–"



He breaks off mid-word as his eyes fall upon something in the room with him. It is Alistair, in the same body he was wearing when Sam killed him.

It's hallucination time!



As previously noted, Sam's hallucinations are absolutely fascinating, providing us with a very rare window into his mind and soul. It has been a frequent source of complaint, over the seasons, that while Dean's inner psyche has been laid bare on numerous occasions, detailed and meaningful insight into Sam has remained rare if not non-existent. Yet nothing of what is revealed in the course of these hallucinations comes as a surprise, but rather serves to lend depth and weight to thoughts and feelings we had already understood via the very subtle building of Sam's story over the past four seasons. We might have never been given such an in-depth exploration of his psyche before, but the clues have been there all along, slowly building on one another to reach this point of full reveal.

Alistair is the first of Sam's hallucinations, the Grand Inquisitor of hell itself, and he represents pain. "Hello, Sam," he smirks, while Sam gapes at him in utter disbelief, too completely out of his mind to realise that it is a hallucination. "Pleasure to see you again," the demon nonchalantly continues, with Sam on the verge of hyperventilating. "Looks like I have you all to myself here. Good. How will we pass the time?"

A second later, Sam finds himself strapped to an actual torture table not unlike the one we saw Ruby tied to in Heaven and Hell, feet bare and arms spread, while Alistair stands over him, gloating, razor in hand.



"No, no, don't, don't, no, no," Sam babbles, because he knows something of what to expect, he knows what Alistair did to Dean, what he is capable of – and Sam also knows the power of revenge, and it was he who killed Alistair. No wonder he dreads the demon so much as touching him.

Without a word, Alistair starts cutting, somewhere around the region of Sam's abdomen, while Sam howls in agony and pleads with the demon to stop. It is very effectively done, keeping the torture off-camera and thus allowing viewers' imaginations to fill in the details.

So what does this hallucination tell us, this first layer of Sam's psyche to be laid bare?

The most straightforward explanation is that it stems from the very real physical pain of withdrawal that Sam is experiencing. He cannot escape either the room or the pain, but he also cannot acknowledge the real reason for the pain, since he remains mired so very deeply in denial of his addiction. So his subconscious constructs this external explanation for it: he imagines himself tied down and being tortured, because that's what it feels like, and his pain is so all-consuming that he remains unaware that he is hallucinating.

And this is also, perhaps, Sam's subconscious telling him that he should be punished – interpreting the pain of withdrawal, this addiction for which Dean has condemned him so resoundingly, as that punishment – because Sam blames himself both for Dean's death and for what happened to him in hell. It was for his sake, after all, whether he asked for that sacrifice or not. By placing himself in the same situation that Dean was in when Alistair tortured him in hell, just as he once sought to switch places with his brother, Sam is both punishing himself for his perceived failure and seeking atonement for everything Dean has been put through for his sake, seeking to even the balance somehow.

Taking that argument a step further, we could even suggest that this hallucination tells us that on a very deep subconscious level Sam does believe that what he is doing is wrong, and therefore believes that he deserves to suffer because of it – that the pain of withdrawal is a punishment for developing the addiction in the first place, and as such fully deserved because he did it to himself. This is the level on which Sam believes himself to be as weak and pathetic as Dean just accused him of being.

"Stop! Alistair! Please," Sam chokes out, and it is interesting that he is reduced to begging for mercy within seconds of the torture beginning. Dean went through decade after decade of this, and worse, with absolutely no possibility of mercy. It was why he eventually broke. Sam is on the verge of breaking almost at once, as his mind attempts to construct insight into his brother's torment and what it led to, the thought of which has been eating away at him ever since Dean died – all the more so after Dean gave in to his questions and talked to him about it.



"So polite all of a sudden," Alistair mocks, leaning in close with bloody hands. "Very nice. I appreciate that."

Ignoring Sam's whimpering pleas, the demon starts to cut once more.

Sam howls again…and the camera pulls away and out of his hallucination to show us that, far from being restrained as he believes, he is in fact lying flat on his back on the bed in Bobby's panic room, with neither Alistair nor his razor anywhere to be seen and not a drop of blood in sight. Sam's arms are flung out to either side as he unwittingly acts out his hallucination, struggling and screaming – and the crane shot reveals that he is stretched out in the shape of an inverted crucifix, and not only that, but this inverted crucifix is atop the downward-pointing pentagram painted onto the floor below. Oh, the imagery, once again – nice one, Show.



Upstairs

Oh man, Dean's face as he listens to Sam's screams echoing through the house! He loves his brother so very much, this is torture for him. And he did it; locking Sam up to force him to go cold turkey was Dean's decision, making him responsible for the agony Sam is suffering, yet Dean believes, absolutely, that it is necessary, that if they can only get past the barrier of Sam's addiction things will start to improve for them.



Also, I really like the physical continuity: that Dean still has a little cut alongside his left eye after his demonic scuffles in the last episode, emphasising how little time has passed, that this episode follows immediately on from that one, with no intermission.

Bobby pours a finger of whisky each for himself and Dean, and Dean takes the proffered glass, but doesn't drink, anguish over his brother's suffering written all over his face. "How long's this going to go on?" he asks, the question almost but not quite rhetorical, because Bobby is a father-figure to Dean, the ever-steady shoulder upon which he leans for support. He is seeking comfort, rather than really expecting Bobby to know, like a child instinctively expecting and wanting its parents to be omniscient, leaning on that unfailing support.

Bobby isn't Dean's parent, though, however close a surrogate father-son relationship they might have, and he is also floundering here, way, way out of his depth. "Here, let me look it up in my demon detox manual," he quietly, half-heartedly snarks, taking a sip of his whisky. "Oh wait. No one ever wrote one."

Oh my God, Dean's face and posture, the way he sighs and hunches into himself and closes his eyes in utter despair! Oh, Dean.

Bobby stares off into the distance rather than meet Dean's eyes as he glumly continues: "No telling how long it'll take. Hell, or if Sam'll even live through it."



Oh, man, Dean's face, yet again, at the thought of Sam not making it. The way his eyes flick sharply toward Bobby but he doesn't otherwise move at all, completely freezes, because he has had the same thought himself, of course he has, but now it has been spoken aloud, and saying something out loud makes it real. Oh, Dean!



Words cannot describe how much this episode makes me flail!

The phone rings. Quickly finishing his drink – and let us note that Dean still hasn't touched his – Bobby picks it up and listens for all of two seconds before snarling, "Suck dirt and die, Rufus. You call me again, I'll kill you."

I love Bobby's telephone manner! The sudden reference to Rufus is a little random, though.

Dean had drifted over to the other side of the room to allow a semblance of privacy for the phone conversation, but now returns with a quizzical expression on his face to ask what's up with Rufus.

"He knows," Bobby replies in a tone of deep, dark foreboding. Knows how much about what, exactly? About Dean? About Sam? About the impending Apocalypse? I really hope that the random Rufus reference in this episode leads somewhere eventually!

The phone rings again. While Dean finally knocks back his drink, Bobby scowls and answers. "I'm busy, you son of a bitch, this better be important."

Apparently it is.

Listening to what Rufus has to say for himself, horror steadily creeps across Bobby's face and he turns anxious eyes upon Dean.



Panic room

Sam wakes up with a gasp and a start to find himself stretched out on the bed in the middle of the panic room, unrestrained and uninjured, contrary to the gruesome torture session he had believed himself to be undergoing before he passed out. Panting as hard as if he just ran a marathon, he gropes at his stomach to reassure himself that it hasn't actually been ripped open and then slowly sits up to flick wary eyes around the empty room, wondering what the hell is going on.

"The answer's yes, you're hallucinating," says a soft, sad voice just behind him, and Sam spins around to see…his own teenage self, as played by young Colin Ford.



This hallucinatory version of Young Sam's hair is a lot darker than we've seen on wee Sam before. Overly so. What's up with that? Does Sam not remember what colour his hair was as a teenager? Is it meant to be symbolic? Or maybe it was just an error.

Sam's jaw just about hits the ground, because he never understood that he was hallucinating the whole time he was with Alistair, so to abruptly be confronted with this interactive image of his own younger self is just mind-blowing. His subconscious has now realised that he is hallucinating, that is clear from the fact that the hallucination just stated as much, but it is also clear that Sam's conscious mind is still struggling with that distinction. He gasps and twitches fearfully at the apparition, who regards him solemnly.

"That's right," Young Sam confirms. "It's me. Or, I mean, it's you," he adds, while Sam tries not to hyperventilate.

Sam stares and stares at the vision of his younger self in utter disbelief. "I'm losing my mind," he gasps at last.



"Definitely," Young Sam derisively snips. Oh, Sam. This is the second layer of his subconscious to be revealed, and the first thing it tells us is that he believes he is going mad. And it is said with such contempt, as well. I have stated numerous times in recent episodes that the Sam we met back in the Pilot would not recognise himself any longer. This disdain with which the imagined version of Sam's younger self regards his current self stands as further evidence of that – this is a level on which Sam can see just how far he has fallen and despises himself for it, this hallucination heavy on the self-loathing. It is also the beginning of his justification for what he's been doing, the first of a series of hallucinations in which he argues his tangled motivations around in circles against his own subconscious.

Sam warily asks what the hallucination wants and Young Sam rounds on him furiously. "An explanation!" he demands, as if it should be obvious. "How could you do this to me?"

Oh, Sam's face falls upon hearing the accusation from his own lips. He looks away, sullen.

"I thought we were going to be normal," Young Sam laments.

"I tried," Sam defensively insists. "I did. It didn't pan out that way." Young Sam rolls his eyes at this tired excuse as Sam dismissively adds, "Sorry, kid."

Oh my, listen to that patronising tone there, and it is directed at himself, a construct of his own subconscious. Man, Sam is messed up.

Young Sam rounds on him once more. "'Sorry, kid'? That's what you have to say? It's all we ever wanted! We were so close! You got away from Dad, you quit on Dean, you were going to become a lawyer and get married! Why'd you blow it?"



Through the eyes of the fourteen-year-old that Sam once was, it all seems so simple, this layer of his subconscious representing that single strand of his personality: his dreams of normality, freedom and independence. His lost innocence. 'It's all we ever wanted', he says, childlike in that belief that one single dream can represent the entirety of a person and that one single dream held by a teenager should never change or be overridden by conflicting ambitions or priorities even once adulthood is attained.

As an adult, Sam knows that what we want and what we get can't always be the same thing and that the ambitions he once held so dear can no longer take precedence, for so many reasons, must be balanced against responsibilities and higher priorities. When I was a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things, and all that. He has reconciled himself to the loss of those dreams, for the most part – but there is still that part of him buried deep within that wants freedom and normality so very, very badly, and is furious and disappointed and believes he has betrayed his younger self by giving up on those dreams, can't understand why he isn't allowed to have what he wanted so very much.

It's heartbreaking because…this is Sam, and we always knew how badly he wanted that safe, normal life, but just two episodes ago, in Jump the Shark, he angrily declared that he no longer even believes in such a thing as normality, yet when you scratch the surface here it still is. And, you, know, it's interesting that he suggests here that he blew it himself, as if had he just tried harder, had he just been stronger and more determined, he could have avoided it all – the way he vacillates back and forth between believing himself strong and believing himself weak.

It's also interesting that he terms leaving for college as escaping from John but 'quitting on Dean'. You have to wonder if that is an interpretation Sam's older, wiser understanding is retrospectively projecting back upon his younger self, or if it was something he already felt at the time, albeit somewhere deep down: that chasing his own dreams meant giving up on his older brother, that getting away from John and his obsession was justified while abandoning Dean was not, but that it was a necessary sacrifice that had to be made in pursuit of his goal.

The adult, demon blood-addicted Sam grits his teeth at the reminder of the dreams he once cherished so greatly. "Look," he fiercely defends. "It killed Jessica."



That was what started it all, and I love that Sam still looks back on that as the defining event of his life, the reason he walked away from the safe, normal life he had worked so hard to build. It wasn't for Dean's sake and it wasn't for John's sake, no matter what new priorities later emerged. It was because Jessica had been killed and for no other reason than that.

"Yeah," Young Sam spits, "And if you hadn't gone off with Dean, if you'd been there to protect her, she'd still be alive."

Oh, but then to have that explanation immediately undermined by this, the first time any incarnation of Sam has openly placed even a portion of blame for Jessica's death on Dean, and it lends a truly fascinating twist to this stage of the conversation, hearing Sam arguing both ends against the middle with his own subconscious like this. Sam knows that going back on the road was his own decision, based on his grief and despair and rage and, above all else, on his burning desire for revenge against Azazel for killing Jessica and with her his dreams of any kind of normality. And yet there is also that tiny part of him, deep down in his subconscious that seeks to lay the blame elsewhere. A part of him that believes maybe she never would have died if only Sam hadn't gone off with Dean that fateful weekend – that maybe it was Dean who brought danger to Sam's doorstep in the first place, just by showing up, after Sam had so successfully kept it at bay all those years, and if only Sam hadn't agreed to go with his brother he could have protected her somehow.

He knows, rationally – God, after everything he has learned since, he knows it damn well – that the Yellow-Eyed Demon would still have come regardless of anything Dean did or didn't do that weekend, that Azazel was never going to let him have the life he wanted, and that even if he had been there he would still have had absolutely no way of saving Jessica's life. He had never encountered a demon at that stage of his life; the Sam of the Pilot had neither the training nor the experience to combat Azazel – or the weaponry, for that matter – and he knows it. Yet still that tiny voice deep down inside keeps whispering what if.

Sam has to look away in despair, nodding distractedly in remembered pain. "I know," he bites out through clenched teeth, and oh man, he is agreeing with the hallucination that Jessica's death is his fault, he still believes it, even now, all these years later, despite everything he knows. However much logic tells him he couldn't have prevented it, emotion thinks it knows better; if she had never met him she would not have been a target, therefore the buck stops here. Oh, Sam.



"Think Jess would want you to turn into this?" Young Sam disdainfully accuses, regarding his older self with disgust. "She loved you! You think she'd be happy, you using her as an excuse?"



Oh man, the depth of the scorn and resentment Young Sam heaps upon the head of his older self is breathtaking. Sam's rationalisations and motivations as a whole are impossibly tangled, but each hallucination represents just one strand of that whole, and as such each is tremendously simplistic. To Young Sam, embodying Sam's dream of normality, that dream and that dream alone is what matters, so that anything that distracted or lured him away from it is merely an excuse. Sam's claim that Jessica's death was a valid reason for giving up on the dream is, therefore, dismissed completely as just another excuse, because what matters is that Sam gave up, whereas if he had continued to prioritise that dream above all and tried harder to attain it, had continued to do his own thing in spite of all provocation and maintained his separation from his father and brother, he wouldn't be in this mess now.

Of course, if he had done all that he would now be dead. But no one ever said that the subconscious has to be rational! Besides, chances are that a large part of Sam maybe believes he'd be better off dead, as things stand.

Sam snaps. "I'm sorry," he spits at the hallucination of his younger self, fierce and unrepentant. "I am. But life doesn't turn out the way you thought it would when you were fourteen years old. We were never going to be normal; we were never going to get away. Grow up."



Never going to be normal, never going to get away – the fatalism there is absolute, and it is fascinating because he is talking to himself, a manifestation of his psyche, telling his own subconscious to grow up and get over his shattered dreams and that there is no point having any desires at all because fate will never allow him to attain them. Sam's harsh words here are reminiscent of the fierce lecture he delivered to his half-brother Adam in Jump the Shark; at the time it felt very much as if he would dearly have loved to give the same wake up call to his own younger self – and now he is. The anger and scorn he heaps upon his younger self here for so much as daring to dream in the first place is as breathtaking as the contempt of the hallucination in deriding Sam's excuses for not fulfilling those dreams, rendering the entire argument so circular it is mind-boggling – and, therefore, highly illuminating of just how conflicted Sam is.

It is also interesting to see how external Sam's excuses are throughout this debate. It was the Yellow-Eyed Demon's fault for killing Jessica and therefore for setting him on the road to revenge – not to mention for singling him out in his infancy in the first place. It was Dean's fault for luring him away from Stanford, so that he wasn't there to protect Jessica when she needed him. It was destiny that brought him to this end. He acknowledges his own culpability only in the sense that he believes he should have fought harder for his dreams, while shying away from confronting the sequence of decisions he made of his own accord that, albeit in combination with external factors, led him inexorably to the predicament in which he now finds himself. Instead of facing up to his own role in the loss of his dreams, he castigates himself for ever having dared to dream at all, unable to challenge the hallucination's accusation that he is using Jessica as an excuse – and the fact that the accusation comes from his own subconscious demonstrates that at least part of Sam believes it.

"Maybe you're right." All of a sudden Young Sam is behind the real Sam, startling him all over again. "Maybe there's…no escape," the teenager blithely, fatalistically continues. "After all, how can you run from what's inside you?"

Oooh, and Young Sam's eyes glow yellow, just like Azazel, and Sam freaks right the hell out.



What is inside Sam and what it might mean has been a source of immense inner turmoil ever since he first started to dream of the future, his fear growing exponentially as he slowly learned more and more – since Azazel admitted to having 'plans' for him, since he saw more and more similarly 'chosen' children falling to evil, and especially since he learned of the demon blood he ingested in his infancy, the most devastating blow of all. Once upon a time he made Dean promise to kill him if he ever turned into something he isn't: that is how afraid he is of becoming evil. Yet now his subconscious has twisted that fear into the ultimate excuse: how can you run from what's inside you? It is a legitimate question, after all – Sam has spent years trying to escape from what is inside him, only to find, of course, that he takes it with him wherever he goes. So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, this fatalistic train of thought suggests. Give up, stop fighting and embrace the demon within; it's not your fault, its destiny.

That the suggestion comes from Sam's own subconscious demonstrates his absolute fatalism, that he believes there is no way out of this – the demon blood he ingested as an infant is something he can never escape from, renders him incurably evil anyway, so no matter how hard he fights all he is doing is putting off the inevitable, and the thought of what he might turn into is terrifying beyond belief. By accepting the inevitability of this and attempting to bend it toward good, by utilising and enhancing his demon-given powers, he has effectively done to himself the very thing he always feared so much, turned himself into something else, something he wasn't – but he is able to deflect the responsibility for this away from himself by calling it fate. It was always going to happen because you can't run from what's inside you, therefore it is not his fault.

Upstairs

"News ain't good," Bobby grimly reports, handing Dean a print out of some kind so he can see for himself just how not good the news is.

"This is what Rufus called about?" Dean asks, scanning the page. "'Key West sees ten species go extinct'?"



"Yep," Bobby confirms. "Plus, Alaska: fifteen man fishing crew all stricken blind, cause unknown. New York: teacher goes postal, locks the door, kills exactly 66 kids. All this in a single day? I looked 'em up. There's no doubt about it. They're all Seals – breaking, fast."

Right. So. First thought. Bobby has clearly spent some time looking into what Rufus told him. So what has Dean been doing while Bobby did all this research? They didn't talk in the meantime about what Rufus had said?

Second thought. I dunno what Bobby's source is, but he certainly isn't reading from the same book of Revelation as I am! Which, of course, he already told us, way back when, just to cover the backs of the writers!

"How many are left?" Dean immediately asks, again as if Bobby is supposed to know, again in exactly the same way that Sam so often asks Dean this same kind of redundant, semi-rhetorical question – because much the same kind of child-parent vibe is at play, that automatic expectation that the elder will somehow know everything; a comfort-seeking instinct.

Bobby has no idea, of course, but suspects that it can't be many at this point, and wonders where the hell Dean's 'angel pals' are.



You know, Bobby hasn't been around for most of the angelic interaction that's been going on all season. I wonder just how much he knows. I mean, he clearly knows enough, but can you imagine the conversation as the brothers filled him in on the various developments?!

"You tell me," Dean gruffs, throwing the paper down and turning away to fret. The angels might have pulled him out of hell, but they most certainly are not his 'pals', not even Castiel, and he can't even begin to predict them at the best of times, never mind right now. What they are up to as these final Seals break? Bobby's guess really is as good as Dean's.

Bobby stands there, also fretting, eyes flicking between Dean's back and the hallway leading down to the panic room where Sam is incarcerated. "I'm just wondering," he ventures, and Dean wonders what. "The Apocalypse being nigh, and all," Bobby worriedly offers. "Is now really the right time to be having this little domestic drama of ours?"

Dean blinks at him. "What do you mean?"



Oh, Dean. Sam trumps Apocalypse any day – it wouldn't even occur to him that there was a choice to be made here, fixing Sam before worrying about anything else is so fundamental to who he is.

Bobby sighs and fidgets uncomfortably. "I don't like this any more than you do," he regretfully states by way of disclaimer before anxiously explaining. "But Sam can kill demons. He's got a shot at stopping Armageddon –"

"So, what? Sacrifice Sam's life, his soul, for the greater good? Is that what you're saying? Times are bad, so let's use Sam as a nuclear warhead?" Dean interrupts, voice and face taking on that hard edge they always get when there is a tough choice to be made and Dean has chosen which side of the line to come down on. Save Sam. It is always save Sam, he can't even contemplate any other option.

And, you know, this is pretty much the exact same conversation Dean and Bobby had at the beginning of All Hell Breaks Loose Part II. Back then, Bobby tried to distract Dean from his dead brother by pointing out that the world was on the brink of Apocalypse, and Dean could not have cared less, because Sam. And that line of reasoning holds good even now. The world is on the brink of Apocalypse, Bobby points out, and as awful as the potential price may be to contemplate, maybe Sam has a shot at preventing it. But Dean could not care less if the world does go to hell, as long as Sam isn't lost in the process. The symmetry is very strong, and demonstrates how little Dean's basic motivations have changed. No matter what has happened, no matter what Sam has done, Dean cannot comprehend a world in which he has not done absolutely anything and everything in his power to save his brother, first and foremost and always.

Bobby looks upset and uncomfortable, torn over what to do for the best. "Look, I know you hate me for suggesting it – I hate me for suggesting it. I love that boy like a son," he points out, gentle but unyielding, and I love him for saying out loud how much he loves Sam and for admitting that he thinks of him as a surrogate son, as much as Dean, because we have seen the close relationship he has with Dean, but Sam has often seemed more on the edges of it. "All I'm saying is," Bobby continues. "Maybe he's here right now, instead of on the battlefield, because we love him too much."



We love him too much. Well, that's the Winchesters pretty much summed up in a nutshell, isn't it? Mary made a deal with a demon to bring John back to life because she loved him too much, and as a result her entire family was cursed. John spent more than 20 years trying to avenge Mary's death because he loved her too much, and as a result their sons were set on the path to destruction. John sold his soul to save Dean's life because he loved him too much, and went to hell as a result. Dean sold his soul to bring Sam back to life because he loved him too much, and ended up breaking the first Seal as a result. Loving each other too much causes these characters nothing but trouble, and is also a large part of what makes them so tremendously compelling to watch.

It is also a concept that is completely alien to Dean. How can there be any such thing as loving Sam too much, when Sam is the centre of his universe, when loving Sam and taking care of Sam has defined who Dean is for most of his life and is all he has left to hold onto? If he lets go of Sam now, then what have the last 20-odd years been for?



But I love Bobby for having doubts, and for stating up front quite specifically how much he loves Sam and hates the idea of using him as a weapon, but for nonetheless being practical and speaking up and presenting Sam's side of the argument for consideration, because there is a war on and they need to be realistic and consider all their options. If nothing else, if Bobby didn't play devil's advocate like this, Dean wouldn't have the opportunity to lay out his position for us in detail in opposition to what we see of Sam's tangled justifications in his various hallucinations. It is important that we understand the viewpoint and motivation of each brother.

I also love that what Bobby lays out for us here is a central argument that Show has alluded to on many occasions: big picture versus small picture, practical versus idealistic. On the one hand Sam is a weapon – the only truly effective weapon they really have against demons, at this stage, trumping the demon-killing knife by a long shot. If the Apocalypse is nigh and Sam has a chance at preventing it, by use of his powers, then when viewed from the perspective of the big picture it makes no sense at all to either restrict those powers or attempt to take them away from him. By making this point, Bobby is being ruthlessly practical, just as Sam has been all season, albeit tempered with sorrow and compassion in a way that Sam has tended not to be. But on the other hand, how could either of them live with themselves afterward if they allowed Sam to lose his soul and become a monster in the process of saving the world? It is something that Dean, in particular, could never, ever allow – do to so would be to betray an essential part of himself. It is the same basic argument we saw in Jus in Bello, whether or not the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Can the knowing sacrifice of even just one individual ever be justified, even if many are saved? In that case, the answer was no – and an alternate solution was found in which no one had to be sacrificed at all.

As things stand, there may or may not be any way of preventing the Apocalypse without the use of Sam's powers. Then again, they don't know for sure that allowing Sam to continue using and enhancing his powers will prevent the Apocalypse, either, whatever Ruby claims and Sam believes. Neither Dean nor Bobby – or Sam himself – has any way of predicting how things will pan out. All they can do is exercise their moral judgement as best they can, based on available evidence, and from where they are standing there is no right or wrong answer anywhere to be seen. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place!

Dean listens to what Bobby has to say, looking utterly distraught, and just shuts down emotionally even more than he already was, clinging to his save Sam mantra and determined not to listen to any voice that declares sacrificing his brother to be a valid option, no matter what. If this is about exercising moral judgement based on available evidence, then Dean has made his choice and is absolutely convinced that it is both right and just. Sam must be saved, first and foremost, and they will just have to find another way to prevent the Apocalypse.



Panic room

Down in his iron prison, Sam sits cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, breathing heavily. Looking both sweaty and dizzy, he turns woozy eyes upward to stare at the giant fan rotating sluggishly up above, hot light streaming through to bake him. I love the cinematography here, creating such a powerful visual sensation of heat and oppression.



Between the heat of the room and the fever of withdrawal, Sam is roasting. His unfocused gaze lands upon a jug of water thoughtfully placed on a table on the far side of the room. It swims before his eyes. Thirsty, he struggles to haul himself upright to try and reach the water – it is only a few feet away but in his current condition it might as well be a mile.

As he curls in on himself, doubling up with cramps, a ghostly voice echoes through the room: "Poor baby."

Startled, Sam's head snaps up again and he casts his frantic and freaked out gaze around the room until he sees…

"Mom?" he gapes, hurriedly hauling himself to his feet.



For, indeed, Mary Winchester herself stands before him, and her hair looks a little different, darker, but she's wearing that same white nightie she died in, with a bloody streak across her stomach where Azazel sliced her open, symbolic both of her status as innocent victim and of her role as a hunter – she represents sacrifice and she represents war. Although Sam never knew her, they have a lot in common. Like Sam, Mary was raised to be a hunter. Like Sam, throughout her youth she wanted nothing more than to escape from that life. Like Sam – albeit far more so than Sam – she found that freedom came at a cost. And like Sam, she found that escaping was, ultimately, impossible, as the supernatural followed her into that safe, normal life she had sought to create for herself and destroyed it completely. Sam's tortured subconscious has chosen her to play a very specific role in his tangled dialogue with himself, and it has chosen her for a reason.

It is interesting to note, therefore, that this hallucination version of Mary has no personality beyond what Sam projects onto her at any given moment, starting out serene to the point of expressionless before becoming warm and maternal as his subconscious slowly gives her the desired shape and substance. Although based heavily upon what Dean has told his brother about the loving mother he remembers and her background as a hunter he learned of in In The Beginning, this Mary in no way reflects the real Mary we have met, who would be horrified at what has become of her son. Sam never knew her; therefore this imaginary version of her can be whatever his subconscious wants and needs her to be.

In this hallucination, moreover, unlike the last, there is no indication whatsoever that Sam realises and understands that what he is seeing isn't real. He is way past the point of being able to make that distinction.

Mary smiles benevolently upon her son. "Sam. You look just awful," she calmly states.

Oh, the way Sam's face falls upon hearing this critical appraisal in place of the loving greeting he no doubt longed for. His eyes drop past his dishevelled clothing to his feet, anticipating still more reproof, still more condemnation. "Let's hear it," he hopelessly mutters, wanting to get it over with. "Go ahead."

In the same expressionless monotone Mary asks what he means, regarding him evenly.

Sam can barely bring himself to say the words. "You're disappointed?" he offers, hating himself and barely able to meet her eyes. "You never thought I'd turn out this way? I'm a piss-poor excuse for a son. Your heart is broken." He sits heavily on the bed, riddled with self-pity and despair. "Am I close?"



Oh Sam. It is extremely telling, though, that Sam opens by stating his expectation of disappointment and rejection, and not just because that was how his last hallucination approached him. It is a sign of his own very real doubts and apprehensions shining through, of how uncertain he is of the decisions he has made, in spite of all appearances to the contrary. It reflects the level on which he is aware of how far he has fallen and has heard and internalised Dean's criticism of his actions – while the way he projects that disappointment and disapproval onto this image of Mary reflects the role of surrogate parent Dean has played in his life. As his actual parent, he expects Mary to react in the same way that Dean has, and not least because he has to know, somewhere deep down inside, that his brother's concerns are only too valid.

And yet –

"Not at all," the vision of Mary calmly states. "You're doing the right thing, Sam." Whatever Sam might have been expecting to hear, that wasn't it. He raises wary eyes to meet his mother's, scarcely daring to believe what he is hearing, as she continues, "What you're doing is brave. You're not being crazy, you're being practical."

Oh, the look on Sam's face, such sudden, terrible hope and disbelief, it really hurts. Oh Sam. Casting difficulties aside, this is why this hallucination had to be of Mary and not John. This layer of Sam's subconscious is all about espousing both the ruthless practicality of his chosen course of action and his need for affirmation and approval. To achieve that, it had to be a hunter, to appreciate the need for practicality in time of war, and also a parental figure, from whom the blessing he desires would carry weight and substance. However, Sam's conflict-ridden history with his father is too complex for John to have ever served the desired purpose here. As fascinating as it might have been to have seen Sam debating the pros and cons of his decision-making process with his father and second-guessing his possible reactions – a debate which could easily have taken up the entire episode all on its own – the mother he never knew is by far the better choice to serve as a blank template on which his subconscious can project the justifications he has clung to all season.

Mary smiles sweetly. "Sam, I am so proud of you," she declares, warm and maternal.

Unconditional love and support. Praise. Affirmation. Absolution. Sam craves all of these things so very much, but has by his actions robbed himself of them – has driven away the brother who always filled that role in his life – so his subconscious has conjured up this image of his mother to provide him with the acceptance and approval he needs to validate the choices he has made, and thus give himself tacit permission to continue along his chosen path.

Scarcely able to believe what he is hearing, it takes a moment before Sam manages to find his voice again. "But," he tremulously begins. "But…Dean…"

Oh, how it kills me that the moment someone starts to say out loud what he wants to hear he gets all confused and tries to argue against it. He is so messed up. And even more than that it kills me that the best he can manage by way of counter-argument is Dean, invoking his brother's name as an argument in itself. Dean has told him in no uncertain terms that he is wrong and that was devastating, but hearing their mother expressing the opposite view, even though it is what Sam wants to hear, is bewildering in the extreme. Sam wants to be right. But he expects Mary to agree with Dean that he is wrong.

"Your brother doesn't understand," says Mary, and Sam looks even more confused. Mary comes to sit alongside him. "I was raised a hunter," she states. "From a long line. We understand that there are going to be hard choices. We do what we have to, to get the job done."



Well, you know, Dean was also raised a hunter. So was Sam. They both know that sometimes there have to be hard choices. Heaven knows Dean has made enough of 'em over the years so that Sam wouldn't have to. But what Dean also knows – and Sam used to – is that there are also lines that you don't cross if you want to remain human. There have to be lines, or there is no longer any way to distinguish between right and wrong or good and evil. Blur those lines enough, and there is no longer anything to fight for, because it is all the same thing.

But Mary represents the part of Sam that has crossed that line and wants to believe he was right to do so, and to validate that belief he must undermine and discredit Dean's position.

Sam stares at Mary. She nods. "Yes, our family is cursed. But you, you have the power to turn it into a gift. You can use it against them." Oh, and she strokes his face and hair and he leans into the touch, almost in tears, oh Sam. He is so, so desperate for the acceptance and understanding he has robbed himself of, craves it like oxygen, needs to believe that the sacrifice he has made was legitimate and worthwhile because he has gone too far to turn back and it has to have been for something, because the thought that he might be wrong, that all of this might have been for nothing, is too devastating to contemplate.



Mary voices here a motivation Sam first raised way back at the start of the season, in Metamorphosis: that since he was doomed to this fate before he was even born and can never escape it, since the demon blood is already part of him, since there is no way to rid himself of the taint of evil imposed on him in his infancy, then trying to subvert that evil destiny and bring something good out of it is the only thing that can give his life meaning. He has fixed upon that sacrifice, his soul to save the world, as the only option open to him, and Sam is nothing if not single-minded when he has a goal in sight. He sees it as the only thing that can give any meaning to the endless trail of tragedy that now lies in his wake – for the loss of his dreams, for the deaths of his family and lover, for Dean's torment in hell, even his current estrangement from his brother, he sees all of it stemming back to that single event that started it all: the moment Azazel dripped blood into his mouth and thus cursed them all. If Sam can use that curse to save the world, can turn it back upon the demons who gave it to him in the first place, even if it costs him both his life and his soul, then it all will have been worth something after all.

It brings us back to control, and Sam's desperate need for it. Azazel dripped blood into his mouth as an infant and thus laid this curse upon him; it was something Sam had no control over. In the wake of Mary's death John raised his sons as hunters, and gave Sam what he remembers as a deeply unhappy childhood; it was something Sam had no control over. He attempted to wrest control of his life back into his own hands when he ran away to Stanford, only for Azazel to destroy all his hopes and dreams along with Jessica; it was something Sam had no control over. In Cold Oak, as Azazel's little endgame played out, Sam made a decision not to kill and paid for it with his life, only for Dean to strike a deal with a demon to bring him back; it was something Sam had no control over. Dean died, and Sam couldn't stop it from happening – and then angels restored Dean to life after Sam had been completely unable to save him; he had no control over any of it.

Over and over again Sam has been swept along on the tide of circumstance, the major events that shaped his life completely out of his control – which for such a control freak must be excruciating. But when he decided to work with Ruby to unlock his psychic powers in order to destroy Lilith, that was his choice. Ruby offered, sure, opportunistically taking advantage of his grief and anger, but saying yes was very much Sam's own choice. Giving it up after the events of Metamorphosis was also his choice, something he was at pains to point out at the time, and when he later decided to resume his partnership with Ruby and start drinking demon blood again, that was his choice, as well. Making those decisions allowed him to feel in control of his own life and destiny at last. This is why he cannot accept Dean's argument that the demon blood is influencing his actions and decisions, that he has a physical addiction, the blood controlling him instead of him controlling the blood, because if he accepts the validity of that argument, accepts that the demon blood has had such an insidious influence on him, then he also accepts that he is no longer in control of his own life. Instead of being a hero, taking charge of a war in which everyone else seems utterly ineffectual and making a noble sacrifice to bring good out of evil, he becomes just another victim once again – worse, because he walked into this one with his eyes wide open, misguided and deluded instead of practical and decisive – and he cannot, will not, accept that.

"For revenge?" Sam grates out.



It remains fascinating that now that he has Mary saying what he has wanted to hear for so long, supporting the course of action he has long advocated, Sam is instantly riddled with the self-doubt that has been kept buried deep all this time. It allows him to play devil's advocate to himself and examine all the counter-arguments he has denied for so long, all those doubts and fears he could never acknowledge for as long as he needed to keep up a front and defend his cause. What is right and what is wrong? Why is he doing all this? Is it to save the world, as he has always claimed? Or is it because he has become so locked into his desire for vengeance that he cannot now alter course? That he asks this question now tells us that Sam suspects, in his own heart, that revenge is the foremost reason for all of this, however valid his other justifications sound. But is revenge a good enough reason for putting himself and everyone else through all this?

It's much the same question that Young Sam asked earlier, in essence. Who is revenge for, and what value does it have if you lose yourself in the process of attaining it? Would Jessica have wanted this? Dean certainly doesn't.

Mary shakes her head. "No. For justice."

Sam has finally swung around to the point of questioning his own motives, acknowledging just how great of a role revenge truly plays – after Dean's death it was all he had left and he clung to it so hard he has forgotten how to let go, even though Dean is back now – and for all his big words about preventing the Apocalypse and saving the world, both of which he really, truly does want, deep down he knows that isn't the real reason for all this, not the main reason, his motives are not really that pure. But he cannot allow himself to confront that truth head on, not for long, because the whole house of cards he has constructed by way of self-justification would come crashing down. So his subconscious immediately provides him with a way out, the perfect excuse. It isn't revenge after all. It's justice. Who can argue with that? As hunters, he and his play the dual role of judge and executioner every day of their lives; why should this be any different?

Unspeakably conflicted, Sam can't hold Mary's eyes, looks away fighting back tears, as she reassuringly soothes him. "I know how scared you are."



Sam struggles and struggles to get his words out, almost crying. "What's…in me – Mom, it's –"

"Evil," Mary nods, cool as a cucumber, as if she hasn't just given voice to Sam's deepest, darkest fear. "And you know it."

Sam nods his despair. What is in him is evil; he does believe that – the hallucination is only voicing thoughts already held in his own subconscious. The demon blood is evil and he knows it, and those first few drops from Azazel he had no choice about, but Ruby's blood was different, he knowingly invited it in, over and over again, believed he could master it, and is still trying to persuade himself it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. But deep down he knows that it is evil, and that his need for it has spun out of control. "What if it's stronger than me?" he chokes out. "Look at me. What if Dean's right?"

Look at me. Sam is an absolute mess, and it is because of the demon blood. Not the demon blood that Azazel fed him, just a few drops that were left to incubate for years and even then remained mostly dormant, but the demon blood he has chosen to drink in vast quantities as a short cut he hoped would grant him an early and resounding victory. Take that blood away, and his condition speaks for itself. His physical dependence on the blood is dangerous, and in this moment of clarity he can see it and is horrified. How can this be right? How can he consider himself strong and in control when his need for the blood is driving him, so that he can no longer distinguish between logic and excuse, between what really is the right thing to do and what he only wants to be the right thing to do because it will allow him to feed his addiction? How can he even begin to trust his own judgement? He is terrified.

But Mary just sits there smiling fondly at him, shaking her head. "Dean can never know how strong you are," she assures him, stroking his hair again. "Because Dean is weak," she continues with a resigned sigh, and Sam looks somewhat shocked to hear her saying this. It's what he has been saying himself for months now, dismissing his damaged brother as too weak to either fight or understand and thus legitimising his own claim on the leadership of this war, but hearing those same derogatory words from this vision of Mary is another matter entirely, the wrongness of it jarring. Yet by putting those words into Mary's mouth, his subconscious is validating that opinion, providing Sam with an external authority to continue overriding Dean's objections and to carry on doing exactly what Sam wants to do. They can't both be right, and Sam won't allow himself to be wrong.

Sam is shaking his head, but Mary firmly continues. "Look at what he's done to you. Locking you in here? He's terrified. He's in over his head. You have to go on without him." Sam looks distraught and afraid, and Mary becomes insistent. "You have what it takes! You have to kill Lilith."



In the throes of this crisis Sam is allowing himself to explore his doubts, but he cannot allow himself to follow through on them, for all the reasons already discussed. He has come too far to back down now. His pride, his need to be right and his physical dependence on a continued supply of blood will not allow it. So when his doubts and fears look like getting the better of him, up pops the subconscious with a stern pep talk that simultaneously undermines Dean and bolsters Sam, defining the strength of the one in opposition to the weakness of the other.

Does Sam believe that being strong is what makes him right or that being right is what will make him strong? Maybe both, all tangled up in this hopeless mess of internal conflict as he argues his own better judgement around and around in circles. He certainly believes that they go hand in hand, that if he is right then he has to be strong, and that if he is strong then he has to be right, and that any variation on this theme is unthinkable, because he won't let go of his need to be the strong one who is right in his actions.

This both compares and contrasts with Dean, who throughout the episode remains stalwart in his belief that he is right, but is less convinced of his own strength. What neither seems able to recognise is that maybe there is no right, only bad and worse, and that they both can be both strong and weak at one and the same time.

"Even if it kills me," Sam brokenly grits out. It is all he's got left now, that desperate need to finish what he started. Even if he loses both life and soul it is the only way any of this can be worthwhile now that he's come so far and sacrificed so much. Or so he believes, so locked in that mindset he cannot see anything else.

"Make my death mean something," Mary whispers. Oh, so the hallucination of Mary Sam's subconscious has conjured up is emotionally blackmailing him now, that is how desperate he is to justify himself and validate his actions. "I'm counting on you, Sam," she insists. "Don't let anyone or anything get in your way. Not even Dean."

Sam nods, looking devastated but resolved, and Mary kisses his cheek and hugs him, and he leans into the embrace longingly…



…and the camera pans back to show that he is alone in the room still. Realising this, Sam blinks and looks around, befuddled brain wondering where his mother went.



Oh, Sam. He is just so, so messed up, it's unbearable. This hallucination represented his most ruthlessly practical side, and was so, so revealing. He believes that what is inside him is evil, and recognises, at least on some level, that there is a good chance he won't be able to control it, that it will overcome and destroy him. But he also believes that he has to do whatever it takes to kill Lilith, even if he loses both life and soul, because it is just and because it will save the world and because he cannot countenance any other outcome. He believes that he has come too far to turn back now, that for better or for worse he must continue his quest to its conclusion – and that even Dean must not be allowed to stand in his way.

Singer's Auto Salvage. Outside

Out in Bobby's car yard, a despairing Dean paces fretfully…and then, with a subdued rustle of unseen wings, Castiel appears behind him.



"Well, it's about time," growls Dean. "I've been screaming myself hoarse out here for about two and a half hours now!"

Two and a half hours, pacing around Bobby's car yard raging at the heavens – that is how desperate Dean is.

Two and half hours before Castiel bothered to respond – compare that with his almost instantaneous appearance when Dean prayed for help in The Monster At The End Of This Book. This truly is a new Castiel – he certainly seems to have meant it, quite wholeheartedly, when he said in The Rapture that he doesn't serve Dean. Given how concerned he had previously been for his human charge, whatever happened to him during what we can only presume was a pretty severe disciplinary session clearly had a profound impact.

Then again, of course, it might have been no more than a stern talking to regarding the error of his ways that he found intellectually convincing. Who can tell? Castiel is pretty suggestible, not to mention anxious not to stray too far from any divinely ordained path for fear of Falling, and it's not like we were told what happened to him off-screen during that episode. We only suspect it to have been terrible because that's what Anna assumed, and she's not what you'd call an unbiased observer.

Anyway, the end result is the same, however it came about. Castiel was smacked down for getting too close to Dean and allowing emotion to influence his actions, and has now made a very clear point by so deliberately delaying his arrival in response to Dean's desperate summons: he is an angel of the lord whose concerns are on a heavenly scale, and is not at the beck and call of any human, not even this one.

"What do you want?" the angel asks, impassive.

"Well, you can start with what the hell happened in Illinois?" Dean suggests, but Castiel plays dumb. "Cut the crap," snaps Dean, as the angel casually strolls toward him. "You were going to tell me something."

"It was nothing of import," Castiel shrugs, as if he thinks that's going to wash.

Dean stares at him in disbelief. "You got ass-reamed in heaven!" he incredulously protests. "But it was not of import?"



Heh. I love the way he so scathingly parrots Castiel's stilted mode of expression.

"Dean," Castiel evasively sighs, looking away. Struggling to meet the human's eyes, he murmurs, "I can't," and Dean looks worried – with good reason, because Castiel is this close to admitting he is troubled by the demands being laid upon him from above, that he has been forbidden to aid his human charge, and given the givens, from where Dean is standing that cannot help but be a source of still more concern. The renegade Anna aside, Castiel was the only angel we've met so far to show the slightest sign of sympathy or compassion toward mankind, and if they no longer have even him on their side… Well, as if Dean didn't have enough to worry about as it is!

Castiel drops his eyes again. "I'm sorry," he says, walking away, because maintaining physical distance as a remedy for emotional distress is a habit he's picked up from Dean. "Get to the reason you really called me," the angel demands with his back to Dean, sounding surer of himself now that a) he can no longer see Dean's face, and b) he has shut down that potentially dangerous line of enquiry relating to himself. "It's about Sam, right?"

Ooh, he kind of snarls Sam's name there, spits it out as if it tastes bad. And, yeah, hindsight suggests it probably does, given what Castiel now knows and has pledged himself to. He also sounds impatient, adding to the deliberate overall impression he gives of having been inconvenienced by Dean's tiresome concerns, which are of no import in the grand scheme of things, and that he is doing the human a favour by listening to him at all. He just can't hold Dean's eyes while he says it, because it is all such a lie. Dean's concerns and Sam's situation are of immense import in the grand scheme of things, and Castiel has been ordered to manipulate both in the interests of a plan he finds deeply disturbing and yet has pledged allegiance to.

While Castiel can't bring himself to look Dean in the face, Dean's eyes remain glued on the angel, assessing and appraising and wondering. "Can he do it?" he asks, since Castiel has cut to the heart of the matter on his behalf. "Kill Lilith? Stop the Apocalypse?"



"Possibly, yes," says Castiel, keeping his back to Dean, because he is not telling the full and unabridged truth and it is easier to lie to someone when you can't see their face and they can't see yours. But then he turns around and looks Dean in the eyes to say the next bit. "But as you know, he'd have to take certain steps."

Nodding, Dean looks distressed at the thought of it. "Crank up the hell blood regimen."

Castiel holds his eyes. "Consuming the amount of blood it would take to kill Lilith would change your brother forever. Most likely, he would become the next creature that you would feel compelled to kill."

How's that for a pronouncement of gloom, laying it right on the line for Dean and confirming his very worst fears, justifying his decision to lock his brother up rather than see his habit continue. Now Dean knows just how high the stakes are and how very, very important it is that he see this through. Whether or not Sam might be able to prevent the Apocalypse becomes insignificant alongside the threat to his very humanity. Saving Sam is who Dean is and saving Sam is the only thing that matters to him. It doesn't matter what it takes. Sam himself once made Dean promise to kill him if he ever turned into something he wasn't, and Dean has already demonstrated that he will do just about anything to prevent that from happening. His primal need to save his brother, in soul if not in body, makes Sam the perfect bait by which the angels can manoeuvre Dean onside and keep him there.

It is worth bearing in mind, however, that 'most likely' isn't actually a definite, though. And hindsight knows that Castiel is manipulating Dean throughout this scene, even outright lying on occasion, betraying his trust immensely. So even though Castiel suggests that consuming such a volume of blood would change Sam forever, it isn't necessarily true. He could well be overstating in order to increase the pressure on Dean and influence the outcome of this conversation. That's a thought worth bearing in mind as we head into the season finale.

"There's no reason this would have to come to pass, Dean," Castiel continues and he really is lying through his teeth there, because we will later learn that he has been ordered to do everything in his power to make sure that it does come to pass.

Dean stares past the angel at nothing, horrified beyond words at how close Sam is to the absolute edge, as Castiel continues: "We believe it's you, Dean. Not your brother." He moves to recapture eye contact with Dean, looking grave but sympathetic. "The only question for us is whether you're willing to accept it. To stand up and accept your role."

As emotional manipulation goes, it is masterful; Castiel plays this conversation perfectly. First he confirms and reinforces Dean's very worst fears, carefully suggesting nothing that Dean doesn't already suspect himself, and so making sure that he is as desperate as he can possibly get without Sam actually being dead already. And then he offers him just the tiniest crumb of hope – but makes that hope dependent on Dean accepting the destiny laid on him by the angels, a destiny he has until now always rejected – while simultaneously taking the opportunity to subtly bolster Dean's ever-wavering confidence in his own ability to succeed in this mammoth task by expressing faith in him.

Dean's jaw clenches. For all the confidence being expressed, this emotional blackmail is essentially accusing him of being weak, again, something he has heard too many times already this season. Dean already took control of Sam out of Sam's own hands as an interim measure born of absolute desperation, but this conversation now places complete responsibility for his brother's fate in Dean's hands. Castiel is saying that the only way to prevent Sam becoming a monster – far from resting in Sam's own hands, with the choices he makes, and far from proposing any kind of treatment or even persuasion for Sam to do the right thing – is for Dean to allow the angels to use him for their purposes, for Dean to conquer his fear and despair and self-loathing and be the hero he never wanted to be and doesn't believe he deserves or is capable of being. Telling him to man up, in essence, for Sam's sake if not the world's, and that if he doesn't Sam will be irreparably lost and it will be Dean's fault for not following orders, rather than Sam's for making a series of very bad choices.

"You are the one that will stop it," Castiel urges, and he really means it, in one sense, but he is still lying, because he isn't talking about the same thing that Dean thinks he is talking about. Lying by omission is still lying.

Dean is beyond desperate. He's got no place to run and hide, and he already sold his soul for Sam's sake once, but now here he is back in that same place again, effectively. "If I do this, Sammy doesn't have to?" he fiercely asks, holding the angel's eyes. He trusts Castiel; even if he doesn't trust the heavenly forces the angel works for, he trusts Castiel to tell him the truth. That's what makes this so painful to watch with hindsight. Sam has been lying to Dean for months now and Dean knows it, knows he can no longer trust a word his brother says. But Castiel has earned Dean's trust, and is now using it against him – is using Sam against him, in exactly the same way that Ruby once used Dean to ensnare Sam. How many times now have we seen Dean taking an onerous burden upon his own shoulders so that Sam wouldn't have to?



Castiel narrow his eyes, doesn't break the eye contact, but can't quite bring himself to say the lie out loud. "If it gives you comfort to see it like that," he says, and he hasn't actually given a straight answer to Dean's question, hasn't actually lied, but he knows damn well that coming from him Dean will take it as both confirmation and promise.

Dean is at breaking point, torn to bits over what to do. While he might trust Castiel to tell him the truth, he does not trust either the ethics or tactics of heaven based on what he has seen of them, is not prepared to trust any plans they might have for him, cannot for the life of him see how his own faltering mortal strength has any hope of preventing the Apocalypse – but he cannot allow Sam to become a monster.

"You're a dick these days," he breathes, breaking the eye contact and walking away, needing that bit of space, because what he is being asked of him is too much, it's too much, and he has given too much for too many years already, but Sam needs him and Castiel has made him believe that if he says yes his brother will be saved and how can he give up on Sam now?



Castiel can't argue with that pronouncement. He knows that the position he has put Dean in is grossly unfair and unjustified, not to mention the fact that he and his have no intention whatsoever of holding up their end of the bargain, that this whole conversation is a lie and a trap. He holds his ground and silently waits.

Dean sucks in a long, shaky breath and then slowly lets it out again. Talk about caught between a rock and a hard place. There is only one answer he can give, because losing Sam is unthinkable, even now, after everything – maybe especially now, after everything. He can't give up on Sam, not without even trying, so has to choose what appears to be the lesser of two evils, one which places immense demands upon him but promises the prevention of the Apocalypse without the loss of his brother. Dean is always going to value Sam above himself, and it is always going to be used against him.

This has always been the problem of the Winchester family. They love each other too much and are willing to sacrifice themselves in any way to keep the others safe. This endless cycle of sacrifice never leads to anything good, only to more heartache and disaster. The hypocrisy is immense, but that has also always been true of the Winchesters! Do as I say, not as I do.

"All right. I'm in," Dean reluctantly, angrily declares, keeping his back to the angel. He's willing to make the promise, for Sam's sake, but he doesn't have to like it, and has no problem with making that clear.

"You give yourself over wholly to the service of God and his angels?" demands Castiel, and he is still staring off in pretty much the opposite direction from Dean, even though Dean has his back to the angel anyway. Neither one can face the other right now.



Hindsight makes it really difficult to watch what Castiel does in this conversation, the way he takes advantage of Dean's desperation and trust and twists them to get what his superiors want from him, all the while knowing that their end of the bargain will not only not be fulfilled, but will be actively subverted, effectively destroying all that Dean holds dear. His manipulations are equal and opposite to Ruby's, proving once again that there really isn't that much to choose between the forces of heaven and hell.

I do, however, appreciate that Castiel is at least visibly ill at ease with both his orders and his own actions. He knows that there is going to be a price to pay for this betrayal, not least of which will be the loss of Dean's trust in him should he learn the truth. He clearly still has doubt and he clearly still has regrets, he just is no longer willing to act on them in the wake of his disciplining.

Dean silently seethes. "Yeah. Exactly," he dismisses, unwilling to express himself in quite such devout terms, because he is Dean, the eternal sceptic. Besides, ever since proving itself to exist heaven really has not lived up to all the hype, but rather has got him over a barrel, and he resents it immensely.

Castiel turns glowering eyes upon Dean's back. "Say it."

Dean wasn't expecting that and turns a puzzled frown upon the angel. His word has always been enough before now, so if they want him to speak exact words of an oath, that has significance, and he knows it – words have power. He sweeps searching eyes over Castiel, who looks deeply troubled but holds his gaze, unrelenting. He is an angel of the lord, and God does not negotiate; He demands, and He sometimes rewards, but He does not bargain. As His agent, for as long as he believes his orders to be divinely ordained, Castiel's resolve must be absolute.

The crossroads demon made a very straightforward deal, Sam's life in exchange for Dean's soul. In contrast, the angels have made no definite promises, have offered only the outline of a possibility, yet Dean cannot help but accept the lifeline because it is the best and only offer he's got, this implacable, unyielding demand that he surrender himself wholly to the service of beings that just a few short months ago he didn't even believe in. He knows better than that now, almost believes, although he most certainly doesn't trust, but he also knows when he is out of options. He can't keep Sam locked up indefinitely, he can't prevent his brother from going straight back to Ruby for more demon blood once free if that's what Sam really wants to do, and he can't prevent the Apocalypse all by himself, not in his faltering mortal strength, no matter how hard he tries and no matter how much of himself he gives. The only way to prevent Sam from turning himself into a monster in his attempt to prevent the Apocalypse is to get there before him, for Dean to do it instead, and he can't do that on his own. The angels are the best and only hope he has. He knows it – and so do they.

In any other circumstances it would be unthinkable for Dean Winchester to give himself over to the service of heaven. But for Sam, no price is too high to pay.

Without any further argument, Dean gives it up. "I give myself over wholly to serve God and you guys," he states, enunciating very clearly to make his point and stepping closer once more to get right into Castiel's space, because that also makes a clear point, basically being as defiant as he can possibly be without actually defying anyone.



Castiel stares into Dean's face, still looking deeply troubled. "You swear to follow His will, His word, as swiftly and obediently as you did your own father's?"

Sheesh, using John against him now, that's a bit mean – but then again, this entire conversation has been deeply unfair and heavily weighted against Dean. He looks offended, but has committed himself to this now – it is for Sam and he isn't about to back down now. "Yes, I swear," he states.



You know, there's just a hint of a get-out clause there, because there was a definite order of priority: service to God first and foremost – and sworn a second time individually – and his angels second. If it can be claimed that the angels en masse are not in fact operating based on God's will but rather are formulating their own strategies in their own best interest, then Dean remains at liberty to ignore their commands and follow the dictates of his own conscience and what he believes might be God's actual will. Plus, if Castiel can be persuaded to break with angelic ranks and do the right thing by humanity once more, then following Castiel's orders and advice instead of those of his fellow angels can also be claimed to be fulfilling the terms of agreement, because whether in league with his fellows or not, Castiel is one of those angels to whom Dean just swore his fealty.

Castiel stares into Dean's eyes, nodding thoughtfully, assessing and appraising, and Dean is exasperated. "Now what?" he snaps.

"Now you wait, and we call on you when it is time," says Castiel, cold and hard and unyielding, and the camera pulls back on the two of them standing in the middle of Bobby's car yard, fiercely staring each other down from about a foot apart.



Dean breaks first, dropping his eyes and shaking his head furiously.

Panic room

Back down in the panic room, Sam sits slumped on the floor against the wall, twitching and jittering and wringing his hands, at his lowest ever ebb. Then he looks down at his hands and is appalled to see the veins outlined in black, symbolic of the demon blood flowing through them, fast spreading up his arms.

Panicking, Sam leaps to his feet and staggers to the little mirror nearby, is appalled to see the black veins spreading into his face, as well, and it is a hallucination, of course, but he is way, way past being able to recognise that and so screams for Dean and Bobby to help him at the top of his lungs.



Hallucination number four – this one is short-lived but very revealing. For all Sam's stated acceptance of the fate he has chosen, for all his appearance of stoic resignation and determination to stay the course, the moment he sees what appears to be physical evidence of the changes being wrought within his body, all that acceptance and acquiescence goes right out the window and he starts screaming for help. The theoretical prospect of it is one thing; tangible, visible evidence is another matter entirely. Sam is not as reconciled to his fate as he would like to believe that he is.

Upstairs

Upstairs, Sam's screams can be heard echoing through the house, somewhat muffled by the thick iron he is encased in, but of course neither Dean nor Bobby responds because Sam has been shouting and screaming ever since they locked him down there – shouting at them to let him out and screaming at the hallucinations he's been having. They have schooled themselves not to listen.

Dean stands in a doorway listening to his brother's screams, his face an absolute blank mask in the way that always signals intense emotional turmoil. He is terrified beyond words for Sam, of what Sam has done to himself and of where it might lead. It is why he just sold himself to the angels, in a desperate attempt to spare Sam anything even worse than this, the only thing he felt able to do for his brother now.



"Now, correct me if I'm wrong," says Bobby, standing in the middle of the room with his arms folded across his chest to signal his deep disapproval. "But you willingly signed up to be the angels' bitch?"



Ah, Bobby. He has such a way with words.

Dean turns anguished eyes back upon his friend, looking offended, and Bobby rolls his eyes helplessly, sympathetic but unyielding on this point. "I'm sorry. Do you prefer 'sucker'?" Dean looks away again, still silent, absolute agony in his eyes, but Bobby isn't about to let him off the hook that easily. "After everything you've said about them, now you trust them?"

"Come on, give me a little credit, Bobby," protests Dean, finally breaking his silence. "I've never trusted them less. I mean, they come on like shady politicians from Planet Vulcan!"

Awesome description. I love it.

"Well, then why in the hell –?" Bobby begins, continuing to play devil's advocate to Dean by asking all the questions that Dean needs to confront in order to cement his arguments, and thus serving more or less exactly the same function for Dean that Sam's hallucinations are for Sam.

Dean explodes. "Because what other option do I have?" he bellows, furious with absolutely everyone and everything that has brought him to this end. "It's either trust the angels or let Sammy trust a demon!"



Bobby concedes the point, calm and grave, and I love him for being such a tower of strength, because it is not as easy as he makes it look and he is as lost and scared and confused as either one of these boys.

In the uncomfortable silence that follows, Dean notices something – or, rather, the absence of something. "You hear that?"

"That's a little too much nothing," Bobby agrees, and they both take off at a run down to the cellar.

Except that, you know, Sam has been quiet before this – we've seen that he hasn't screamed and shouted during all his hallucinations. So there is really no reason for Dean and Bobby to find this silence any more troubling than those that preceded it, other than that the plot requires them to.

Panic room

Dean and Bobby arrive outside the panic room and open the viewing flap to see Sam collapsed on the floor, writhing and whimpering. Frantic, Dean anxiously wonders if he might be faking. Bobby asks if he really would, and Dean despondently admits that he thinks Sam would do anything, and damn but that's heartbreaking, that unhappy little admission, because it tells us clearly just how badly the trust has been broken. Dean wants to trust Sam, but knows damn well that he can't, and the worst thing is that he is right to be so suspicious, after everything.



But then, with an agonised groan, Sam hurtles through the air to slam hard against the wall.

"That ain't faking," Bobby redundantly diagnoses as Dean hurriedly unlocks the door.

As they rush in, Sam starts rolling around the wall, still twitching and jerking, completely out of it, in the throes of an actual seizure, a telekinetic seizure, moreover. Damn! Huge kudos are due to Jared Padalecki for so totally nailing these scenes.



Sam flails and fits as the others haul him off the wall and down to the bed, fighting every step of the way. Bobby pulls his belt off and places it between Sam's teeth to stop him biting his tongue as he seizes, and sensibly proposes that they tie him down for his own safety, but Dean is not listening. He's just completely lost in the sheer horror of what his brother has done to himself, just stands there staring and staring at Sam, holding him down, horrified beyond words – beyond thought.



Bobby, bless him, has to yell at Dean to get his attention and snap him out of it, because they can't all be broken at the same time, but Bobby being there means that he gets to be the one holding everything together so that Dean doesn't have to, for once.

Oh, boys! Oh, boys to the nth degree!

Later

Some time later, the immediate crisis over, Sam wakes up once more looking calmer than he has in quite some time. He immediately finds himself securely handcuffed to the bed – oh, and Dean has thought to wrap cloths around his wrists and ankles beneath the cuffs, to prevent them hurting Sam if he fought against them, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it breaks my heart to see it, that tiny gesture of love and concern, in the middle of everything that's going on.



Dean himself is standing at the foot of the bed, looking miserable beyond belief, and apologetically explains the restraints. "We had to. The demon blood was flinging you all over the room."



Sitting up, Sam can't stop himself testing his bonds, instinctively reacting against them, while Dean continues to look deeply pained, his voice all growly and husky with emotion. "Sam, why did you do this to yourself?"

Oh, Dean. He sounds so heartbroken. And yet…this isn't actually Dean. It is just another of Sam's hallucinations, the final hallucination, and it is interesting that the hallucination version of Dean at least starts out looking and sounding pretty much exactly like the real Dean, proving how well Sam understands both the reasoning behind his brother's concern and opposition to his actions, and how distressed Dean is about it. Sam's subconscious has chosen Dean to represent Sam's greatest doubts about what he is doing – and since it is much the same role Dean has played in reality, it makes sense. The brothers have long acted as conscience to one another and thus held each other back from going too far. Sam's tragedy this season is that he stopped listening to that voice.

Dean looks pained – but Sam looks defiant. "You know why," he spits at his brother, instantly on the defensive. This initial exchange has played out in much the same fashion as every other attempt Dean has made to talk to Sam about his lies and addiction in recent episodes: Dean opens the door for Sam to come clean and explain himself, but rather than demonstrating any willingness to talk things through, Sam reacts by pushing his brother away, more interested in defending than explaining. Too busy expecting the worst to appreciate or respond to the gesture, he doesn't expect or even really want Dean to understand, he just wants him to accept and give in.



"Right." Dean remains unconvinced. "Kill Lilith. The big excuse. But why? What, revenge? Right?"

The big excuse. Revenge. Sam's hallucinations keep coming back to those two points, describing his stated motivations as an excuse and suggesting that revenge is his true motive. Since it is Sam's own subconscious speaking in every instance, this implies pretty heavily that beneath all his layers of denial Sam is absolutely terrified that his motivations really are unsound.

I really love about this episode is that it gives us this insight into Sam's tortured subconscious. All season he has appeared so very resolute in his actions, utterly blinkered in his pursuit of the goal he has set for himself and in the method with which he has chosen to attempt it. Fandom has offered all kinds of arguments against Sam's course of action, and so has Dean, and now we finally get to see that Sam has actually considered all those factors himself – and is in fact a long way from being sure that those arguments are not right.

Yet in spite of all this, Sam still refuses to back down, whether because of his stubborn pride, his physical dependence on the blood, complete and utter denial, or all of the above.

"Of course," Sam automatically replies, without even stopping to think about it. Killing Lilith has become an end in itself, so much so that he has long since ceased questioning why, takes his reasoning there completely for granted.

"Revenge for what?" Dean presses. "For sending me to hell? Did you happen to notice I'm back? Alive and kicking. So what's the point?"



Oh man. Jared Padalecki is knocking his portrayal of Sam's withdrawal out of the park, but no one does raw, naked distress like Jensen Ackles, and it is devastating to compare the Dean we see in this episode with the Dean we first met in season one. Back then, Dean kept his emotions heavily shielded, liked to give the impression that nothing got to him, but these days he doesn't bother even trying to pretend to be okay, simply does not have the energy for it any more.

And, you know, so far the hallucination still looks and sounds pretty much exactly like the real Dean. And yet it isn't. It is actually Sam who is raising all these points, his subconscious re-creating his brother's deep distress to perfection to hammer home the point of what he is doing to him. By putting this strong argument against his actions into Dean's mouth he is reminding himself how crazy it is to be so hell-bent on revenge for the death of a brother who is now alive and kicking once again, something he never really even took time to celebrate – pointing out to himself that his determination to avenge his brother is actually hurting him very badly, and asking what on earth, therefore, is the point of it.

We know from I Know What You Did Last Summer that Sam set his sights on Lilith long before he knew that she was trying to kick-start the Apocalypse, and back then he made no bones about it: he wanted to avenge Dean's death. It was the only thing that kept him going while Dean was dead, the only thing he had left to cling to, and the habit became too deeply ingrained to kick even now. Even though Dean is back, Sam still cannot bring himself to let go of that obsession, to the point where he is even willing to lose his brother all over again, has pushed Dean away himself rather than relinquish his quest, even while his initial motivations have become ever more clouded, overlaid with a myriad of overlapping issues and priorities.

Finding out that Lilith is breaking Seals, intending to free Lucifer and kick-start the Apocalypse, only serves to provide him with even more of a reason to go after her, but deep down in his soul Sam knows that his obsession was originally rooted in desire for vengeance, and will always come back to that, even though he knows equally well that it is pointless. Here, he doesn't even fall back on the excuse the Mary hallucination offered earlier, the claim that killing Lilith is about justice rather than revenge. He knows, deep down, that when all else is said and done it really does all boil down to revenge, that even if Lilith weren't breaking the Seals he would still want her dead, but I'm not sure that even Sam himself really knows why any more. This is why he is unable to answer hallucination!Dean's very reasonable question.

The fact is, though, that although Dean is back, Sam has still not recovered everything he lost when his brother died. It was the culmination of too many years of loss and it broke him. Dean being back does not take away those many reasons Sam has to hate Lilith, who now stands symbolic of everything demonkind has ever done to him. He is angry for the cumulative loss of his shattered innocence and broken dreams, none of which can ever be reclaimed. He is angry for what happened to Dean in hell, that he was broken, because he might be alive again but the damage is done and cannot be repaired; in Sam's perception, at least, the brother he has been given back is not the same brother that he lost, and it is easier to focus on punishing those responsible than to give Dean the emotional support that he needs to heal. And he remains furious with Lilith for daring to take his brother away from him in the first place, because having Dean back doesn't change the fact of those long months that Sam spent alone, that the demon made him a victim all over again, when he had been a victim too many times already. Killing Lilith will allow Sam to feel truly in control at last, and he needs that.

So, there are certainly many factors that could feed into Sam's ongoing desire to exact revenge on Lilith, but he is not yet ready to face up to any of them, not even within the privacy of his own mind and hallucinations. Instead he shies away from the question completely and falls back on his biggest and best excuse.

"The point?" Sam is deeply exasperated, all the more so since the handcuffs prevent him waving his arms to emphasise his point. "How about stopping the damn Apocalypse?" he furiously proposes, sidestepping rather than answer the actual charge, as the camera now pulls back to show that he is talking to thin air, that Dean is not standing at the foot of his bed, as he believes, because, of course, this is a hallucination and not an actual conversation between the brothers.



Preventing the Apocalypse is an excellent and worthy goal, of course it is. But even as Sam claims it as justification for his actions, the fact that his own subconscious keeps arguing against that rationale proves how unconvinced he is of the purity of this stated intentions. There may or may not be another way to stop Lilith and prevent the Apocalypse, but Sam does not want to consider those other possibilities. He is determined that it has to be him; it has to be done this way, his way, because stopping Lilith through other means might prevent the Apocalypse but it would not satisfy Sam's very personal grudge against her.

And yet, vengeance is mine, says the Lord – and with good reason, too. Over and over again this show has demonstrated that when a person allows their lust for revenge to consume them, it leads only to destruction.

"My gig, not yours!" shouts the hallucination of Dean. "The angels said so, remember? God picked me, man."

Oh, and Sam resents that. The way the hallucination presents the argument makes that clear, rubbing Sam's nose in it. God picked me, not you. Oh, how it hurts Sam that his brother was chosen instead of him, when he had believed so hard and wanted it so much compared to Dean's steadfast cynicism and refusal to believe. To know that Dean the unbeliever was considered righteous, while Sam who had believed so fervently is written off as the boy with demon blood…oh, how he resents it. Oh how he longs to prove himself worthy, to prove them all wrong.

Sam glowers at the empty space before him as Dean's disembodied voice, echoing around the chamber – or, really, just Sam's head – asks if he has any more fantastic excuses to offer.

And there's that word again: excuse. It is an accusation that Sam's hallucinations keep flinging at him, over and over again.

Upstairs

Back up in Bobby's study, the real Dean sits perched on the very edge of Bobby's sofa, tense and afraid and agonising over what Sam has done to himself, staring anxiously off into space, lost in desperate thoughts. He just saw with his own eyes the very real physical damage that Sam's addiction and subsequent withdrawal has caused, and if he was afraid for his brother before…



"I'm going to ask one more time," says Bobby, standing behind his desk looking worried. "Are we absolutely sure we're doing the right thing?"

Dean can't believe he is hearing this. "Bobby, you saw what was happening to him down there. The demon blood is killing him!"



Bobby shakes his head, too worried to pull any punches. "No, it isn't," he says. "We are?"

"What?" Dean is startled.



"I'm sorry. I can't bite my tongue any longer," says Bobby.

It is interesting that he has kept quiet and gone along with what Dean wanted for so long, given his misgivings. Sam is Dean's brother and however much Bobby loves them both he is not a blood relative; it is Dean's decision to make, and Bobby is determined to support him wholeheartedly. But part of that support means stating his misgivings for the record, making sure that all angles and options have been considered.

"We're killing him," Bobby anxiously declares. "Keeping him locked up down there – this cold turkey thing isn't working. If he doesn't get what he needs, soon…Sam's not going to last much longer."

Damn. Saying it out loud makes it real. The two men hold one another's eyes for a long moment, both desperately worried, neither one knowing what to do for the best – let the cold turkey continues until it kills Sam, or let him go knowing that he will go straight back to Ruby for more demon blood and continue to spiral ever further down to utter damnation.

Dean weighs up his old friend's words but shakes his head, near to tears. "No," he whispers. "I'm not giving him demon blood, I won't do it."



You know, the reason Dean won't do it is because he believes it is bad for Sam, body and soul, rather than because it is wrong to bleed an innocent host – I would kind of like for someone to make that point! Ruby's host might be dead already, but the demon Sam drank from in the last episode wasn't, as far as we know. However, Sam has always been Dean's utmost priority. Damage to the host body Sam drinks from is never going to ping Dean's radar when there is damage to Sam to worry about.

"And if he dies?" Bobby presses.

"Then at least he dies human!" Dean insists, desperate and agonised and at the very end of his tether.



This is what Sam made him promise, once upon a time. It is also what John once made him promise – to kill Sam (or let him die) rather than see him turn into a monster. He gets it now, devastating though it is. For years he has believed that keeping Sam alive was all that mattered, no matter what happened and no matter what Sam did, but throughout those years he also always had absolute faith in Sam, believed wholeheartedly in his brother's inherent goodness, in his humanity. He never dreamt they could ever come to an end such as this. But now he can look back on the order that John once gave him and the promise that Sam once extracted from him, both so desperate and afraid, and he gets it, understands for the first time in his life that there could be something worse than Sam dead. Preserving his brother's humanity at all costs is what matters now.

Panic room

"I know why you really drink that blood, Sam," says fake!Dean, pacing around the captive Sam in much the same way as the real Dean paced around the captive Alistair while interrogating him in On The Head Of A Pin. The fluorescent lighting overhead adds to the intimidating atmosphere as the hallucination version of his brother Sam has dreamt up veers further and further away from an accurate reflection of Dean and instead begins to project Sam's greatest doubts and fears about himself onto his brother. The irony of the juxtaposition between the real Dean and the fake Dean is painful – Sam needs so desperately to hear what the real Dean is saying about his devotion to his brother, but instead has only this facsimile cooked up by his subconscious to bring his worst nightmare to life and fling it in his face.



"Just…leave me alone," Sam miserably mutters, and man, that's just heartbreaking. This is Sam's subconscious representation of the person he loves most in the world, and he is reduced to begging him to be left alone.

Dean shrugs and just keeps on talking. "Makes you feel strong – invincible," he diagnoses. "The Big Bad Wolf and we're all little pigs."

"No. You're wrong, Dean," Sam desperately insists.

"It's more than that, isn't it," Dean continues, still slowly and calmly pacing around Sam on the bed, so that it becomes Dean's turn to be lit up by the red emergency light, symbolic of the menace he now represents, because he is not real but rather embodies the malignant fears lurking within Sam's mind. "It's because your whole life you've felt…different, am I right?"

"Stop," Sam pleads. He wanted to hear what the hallucination of Mary had to say, craved the support and reassurance she offered, but does not want to face up to the doubts and fears expressed in this hallucination, cannot bear the thought of being wrong and his brother rejecting him.

Dean pauses and eyes him appraisingly. "Am I a little close to home, huh?"

Furious, Sam strains against his restraints again, but they remain as firm as ever.

And Dean keeps on talking, accusing, relentless. "Not different because you were some lonely kid or because of your weirdo family –"

"Stop it!" Sam hoarsely protests.

Looking disgusted with what he sees, Dean leans in close. "Because you're a monster," he snarls, vicious, and Sam bellows for him to shut up, struggling furiously against his bonds. "You were always a monster," Dean insists. "And you only feel right when you're sucking down more poison, and more evil."



Man, this hallucination might be the most revealing of the lot, demonstrating what, in the deepest, darkest corner of his soul, Sam is most afraid of, both in what the hallucination says about him – and that, therefore, he thinks about himself, somewhere deep inside – and in the fact that he places those accusations in Dean's mouth.

We have seen Sam working through his justifications, his desire for normality and his need for absolution versus his self-doubt and inner conflict. We have seen his craving both for control over his own life and revenge against the creatures who have robbed him of it, have seen how badly he longs and needs to be right, all the while fearing that maybe, just maybe, he might have been wrong all along, but unable to admit it, always finding an excuse or justification to fall back on. In the hallucination of Mary we saw him admitting to himself his deep-seated belief that the demon blood he was fed as an infant has rendered him incurably evil and his fear that this evil would eventually defeat him, alongside his determination to bring something good of it along the way.

Now this final hallucination peels back another layer, reveals his fear that since he has always felt different and has also always had evil within him, maybe the one was a symptom of the other all along, that if he really is so wrong now then maybe it is merely the latest and worst manifestation of a wrongness that has been inherent in him the whole time, pre-destined, inevitable and completely inescapable. And, worse, that the brother who has always been everything to him – brother, best friend and parent all rolled into one – knows him to be nothing more than an evil monster, has always known, and hates him for it. How could he not, when Sam hates it about himself?

Dean might be the one with the continent-sized abandonment complex, but Sam's deep-seated need for his brother is matched only by his fear that Dean will reject him for who and what he is, a fear that has been evident ever since he first began to have visions and waited months before admitting them to Dean. Over and over again we have seen Sam projecting his own fears onto Dean instead of trusting in his brother's abiding devotion to him, and this tendency has been the greatest instrument of destruction to their relationship this season, Sam's own paranoia creating an insurmountable obstruction to the thing he wants most of all: his brother's love and acceptance. The worst part is that he already had both of those things from the start, but feared their loss so much that he ended up destroying them himself.

The juxtaposed scenes of Sam's hallucination in which Dean vilifies and disowns him and Dean's argument with Bobby over saving Sam's humanity ahead of his life illustrate this point perfectly. Sam was so afraid of what his brother's reaction would be when he learned the truth that he lied and he hid for months, destroyed Dean's trust in him completely, driving the wedge between them ever deeper and succeeding only in making Dean's reaction all the worse when he eventually did learn the truth – in fact creating the very reaction that he feared. Even now he continues to project his own self-loathing onto his perception of how his brother sees him instead of trusting in Dean's amply demonstrated love for him, which has always, always outweighed any- and everything else. Meanwhile, in direct contradiction to Sam's belief that he has already lost his brother, even while knowing that he cannot now trust a word Sam says, Dean is still doing everything in his power to keep his brother as his brother, to prevent him becoming the monster Sam fears he already is. Oh boys.



Hearing his deepest, darkest fears voiced aloud by something wearing his brother's face – the ultimate condemnation, because it is Dean's approval that Sam needs most in the world – Sam looks desperate, on the verge of tears again, completely unable to escape the furious, contemptuous indictment.

Upstairs

"I would die for him in a second," the real Dean declares, eyes shining with unshed tears, absolutely devastated that they have come to this end, and oh my God, it is heartbreaking beyond belief to hear Dean declaring his devotion like this in the same moment that Sam is hallucinating his utter rejection. "But I won't let him do this to himself. I can't. I guess I found my line. I won't let my brother turn into a monster."



There's the difference, right there. Sam suspects that he already is a monster and perhaps always has been, so that all that remains is for him to seek to use his monstrous nature for good. Dean, on the other hand, believes that Sam is still Sam, just as he always has been – but is in danger of becoming a monster if he goes too far, and can no longer be trusted to hold himself back, because given the extent of Sam's deceptions Dean has no way of knowing if there is anything else he still doesn't know or to what extent his brother's judgement has been affected by the demon blood he has consumed in recent months. He clearly doesn't, however, believe that the line has been crossed yet, and remains desperate to save Sam from himself by holding him back while he can't hold himself back, before it is too late. It is a crucial distinction.

I found my line. Dean has dreaded this moment ever since that fateful day John told him that he might one day have to kill Sam, way back at the start of season two. He has known since then that they might one day come to this and has done everything in his power to prevent it happening, only to find himself here anyway, and he has finally found his line, the line he will not cross even for the sake of preserving Sam's life. Sam human is more important than Sam alive – and that was a distinction Sam himself once agreed with. Once upon a time, Sam begged Dean to kill him rather than see him transform into something he wasn't, preferred death over becoming a monster, and Dean, who has since been to hell and experienced every horror it has to offer, now understands what he meant – now understands that there truly is a worse outcome than Sam's death, and they are teetering on the brink of it.

Bobby looks heartbroken, but resolved to support Dean on this. As Sam's brother, it has to be Dean's decision, and he has made it.



Panic room

"Monster. Sam, you're a monster!" hallucination!Dean snarls at Sam, who tries desperately to turn his face away, the only escape possible.

"Dean. No," Sam begs, desperate not to be rejected by his brother. Losing Dean in this way has been Sam's greatest fear all along, the only sacrifice he was not willing to make. That was why he kept his secret so determinedly, no matter what the damage – it didn't matter if Dean didn't trust him, as long as he didn't hate him, as long as he didn't know what Sam had become and reject him for it. This hallucinated conversation, then, Dean's rejection of him as Sam, is the ultimate price to be paid for what he has done.



And once upon a time Sam made Dean promise to kill him if he ever turned into something he wasn't. He could never have foreseen that it would happen like this; he would take death over hatred and rejection any day.

"And I tried so hard to pretend that we were brothers," the hallucination sneers, leaning in closer than ever. "That you weren't one of the filthy things that we hunt. We're not even the same species. You're nothing to me."



This is what Sam is most afraid of, what he believes about himself, and his tormented subconscious is placing the words in Dean's mouth because he knows that that is where they can do the most damage. It is a double-whammy – Sam's greatest fear about his own nature, combined with the fear that Dean also believes it about him.

"Don't say that to me," Sam desperately pleads. Dean rejecting him as a brother is the ultimate horror, and it still isn't clear whether or not he understands that this is a hallucination. "Don't you say that to me."



Sam squeezes his eyes closed and turns his face away, the only freedom he has to escape, cringing and gasping as he anticipates more insidious accusations being flung his way…but instead there is only silence, and he opens his eyes again to see that Dean has vanished.

The hallucination is over at last – but how aware Sam is at this point of the distinction between reality and hallucination remains debatable.

Later

Sam drifts off into a restless sleep and time passes. Night falls.

Sam awakens…just in time for the handcuffs binding him to snap open, seemingly of their own volition. Sam is startled and confused, and has got to be wondering if it is real or just another hallucination. How can he possibly tell, at this point?

Then the door to the panic room creaks open, again seemingly of its own volition. Curiouser and curiouser.



"Hello?" Sam warily calls out, wondering who is out there. His hallucinations have always involved people, interaction. This is different. This is real. This is worrying – but it is also a valuable opportunity. Withdrawal has been painful, both physically and emotionally, and the craving for more demon blood to assuage those symptoms is as powerful as the justifications and excuses Sam's hallucinations laid bare were deep-seated. Presented with the opportunity to escape and pursue his own agenda once more, there is no way he is going to just sit around and not take it.

Since no one appears to be anywhere in the vicinity, or at least not about to declare themselves upon invitation, Sam hesitantly approaches the door. "Anyone here?" he rather anxiously whispers, because he might be desperate to get out of here and find himself a hit of demon blood and continue after Lilith, but he hasn't lost his wits, knows that both suspicion and caution are called for here.

Again, there is no reply. Still shaky and unsteady, Sam ventures out through the door and scurries toward the stairs as fast as his wobbly legs will carry him. He really does look awful – pasty and hollow-eyed and sweaty. There can be no doubt of the physical toll withdrawal has taken on him.

As soon as Sam is out of sight, Castiel steps out of the shadows to watch him go, inscrutable, then closes the door again and locks it with a flick of his fingers.



Damn!

The angel is following orders, of course he is, and we won't know the reasoning behind those orders until the season finale, but that doesn't alter the fact that this act is an enormous betrayal, a terrible, unforgivable betrayal. He made Dean believe that Sam would be spared but has now become the agent of Sam's undoing, the very thing Dean was trying to prevent when he swore the oath Castiel dragged out of him. Castiel told Dean what would happen to Sam if he wasn't stopped from pursuing his blood addiction, said there was no reason it should come to pass – but has now engineered that exact situation. He knew exactly what he was doing when he talked to Dean, and he knows exactly what he is doing now. That he evidently doesn't feel good about it does not change the magnitude of the betrayal – and Castiel had developed past this, had learned that sometimes it is better to listen to one's conscience than to blindly follow untenable orders. The events of The Rapture have sent him straight back to square one, however, and it remains disappointing that this development happened entirely off-screen, so that we see only the effect without truly understanding the cause of this regression.

Upstairs

Sam finds his coat, which Dean has thoughtfully left on a hook for him, and carefully creeps past Dean and Bobby, who have both fallen asleep in the study, Bobby at his desk and Dean on the couch.



Dockside, someplace random and anonymous

In some random, unspecified location, the first phase of his dirty work done for the night, Castiel stands at the edge of a dock and broods.



It would be nice to think that he is contemplating the lesson he learned in On The Head Of A Pin, that sometimes one's conscience is a clearer guide to right and wrong than the orders one receives, but who can tell. The unspecified disciplinary action taken against him in The Rapture appears to have very effectively overridden any desire he ever had to think for himself or to follow the dictates of his own estimation of right and wrong. He clearly doesn't like the orders he is following this dark and terrible night, but he just as clearly is going to follow them anyway. Self-determination didn't last long!

Hearing a rustle of wings behind him, Castiel turns to see Anna standing a short distance away.

Like Dean, Anna has learned to trust Castiel, at least enough to believe that he can and will think for himself, if only up to a point. It makes him very effective bait for them both tonight – he knows it and so do his superiors.

"What did you do?" Anna accuses, although, of course, she already knows.

"You shouldn't have come, Anna," Castiel tells her, and he is dead right there.

"Why would you let out Sam Winchester?" Anna demands

Hey, so remember in the last episode when she didn't know about Sam and the demon blood, seemed so puzzled by the change in him – funny how she seems to know absolutely everything now, down to the fact that Sam has been first locked up and then released and that it was Castiel who freed him, even though that only happened a matter of minutes ago. How come she could see or find out about the one, but not the other? Where does she get her information, I wonder? And has it ever occurred to her to doubt its fullness or veracity?

"Those were my orders," Castiel gravely explains, hiding behind that statement just as he did in On The Head Of A Pin, the good little soldier who is responsible for nothing that he does because the order came from someone else and it is not his place to question it. He had grown past this, had learned the value of asking questions, of thinking for himself and taking personal responsibility for what he does, only to be regressed right back to square one, and off-screen, at that – but this was why that had to happen, to make his actions in this episode possible.

"Orders?" Anna disbelieves. "Cas. You saw him – he's drinking demon blood. It's so much worse than we thought. Dean was trying to stop him."



Okay, now all this is very interesting, and Anna's horror at the thought of Sam drinking demon blood strongly backs up Dean's determination that it must not be allowed to continue – although I still don't subscribe to the apparently popular opinion that she is the only angel who can be trusted to always tell the truth, since she quite demonstrably is not omniscient and is no less biased than anyone else on this show. For all her hands-off approach, she is generally on the side of humans and humanity, and her unfeigned horror backs up every indication we have been given in the past that Sam drinking demon blood is not a good thing, however hard he tries to justify it.

I'm curious, though, to know just what it was that they all previously thought Sam was doing – and just who, exactly, is that 'we' she refers to. I would also like to know how she knows that Castiel saw Sam drinking demon blood. She wasn't there. Castiel is hardly likely to have told her. So where does she get her information? Does she have an inside source? Can that source really be trusted? Or has she been spying, watching over proceedings without daring to intervene – in which case, I would ask again why she didn't pick up on what Sam was doing earlier.

Maybe she only spies on Dean and Castiel, and it never occurred to her to follow Sam around to see what he was up to, in spite of the apparently long-standing concern over his behaviour expressed here.

Castiel stares at Anna for a moment longer…but sticks to his resolve. "You really shouldn't have come," he repeats, regretful but resolved – yet he looks away, not wanting to see the fruits of his labour.

And now I'm wondering how Anna knew to find Castiel here, at this specific point and at this specific time. He was expecting her, came here as bait for a trap, but how does that trap work, exactly? Has Anna been watching him, waiting for him to be alone? Did he know that and come here specifically to lure her out into the open? Or has someone passed on a message and thus betrayed her?

We are not told. Anna's story remains on the periphery, which is, of course, how this show has always operated. But if we are going to see this much of Anna, it might help if we understood a little more about what is going on with her!

There is another rustle of wings, and two more random angels – wearing human meat suits – appear alongside Anna and take her arm.

Damn, but angels wearing human vessels really are becoming as ten-a-penny as demons, these days – more and more of them all the time. Are there really that many special individuals with special blood out there? Do this many angels really need to have meat suits all the time, and if not what happens to those individuals if discarded? Is Jimmy really the only one ever to have been left once possessed?

Anna turns dismayed eyes back upon Castiel, who has betrayed her so completely, but she says nothing, and he can't bring himself to look back at her until brilliant light has started to fill the air.



We don't get to see what is happening, but clearly Anna is being dragged back to heaven, although whether both she and her captors are ascending complete with human bodies or not we are not shown. What matters is that Anna has been recaptured and hauled back to heaven for the punishment she has feared and been running from for so very long. Just another loose end tied up as the war winds toward its climax – or at least the climax of this phase – and another potential ally of Dean's removed from the field before she could intervene and help him recapture Sam.

Not that she was likely to do that, because Anna doesn't like to get her hands dirty by actively taking part, she prefers to pop in and out pronouncing judgement on others – and maybe that is because she has been in hiding in fear for her life, or maybe it's just a personality flaw; we don't really know her well enough to judge. Still, removing her from play is a safeguard, from an angelic point of view.

As pointless as I have largely found her, as a character, I do now feel that we really need to see Anna again next season, otherwise her appearance here (and, really, many of her previous appearances) really is a complete waste, utterly pointless. To heaven, she might be a loose end that has now been tied up, but for us viewers she is a loose end that has very much been left hanging.

As the light fades once more, Castiel looks pained at what he has done and turns away to brood some more.



Once again, it is plain that Castiel is not happy about what he has been ordered to do, but once again it is equally plain that he is neither brave enough nor confident enough to act upon his misgivings.

Singer's Auto Salvage

Sam carefully picks the lock of Bobby's Chevelle.

Wait. So Sam still hasn't made his getaway? That whole thing with Castiel and Anna took place in the scant few minutes it would have taken Sam to sneak out of the house and find Bobby's car?

I know Castiel (and Anna) can teleport from one place to another in seconds, but still, that's awfully fast work to have laid and triggered such a trap, especially given that Anna referred to something Castiel had done mere moments earlier, it turns out. Makes me wonder again how she found out about it – and acted on it – so very quickly. The timing is a little weird! It would have been better, perhaps, if this scene had come before the Castiel-Anna scene, which could then have marked the transition from night to morning and the passage of time and would not be quite so jarring.

Anyway. Behind Sam comes the sound of a shotgun being pumped, and Bobby's reflection becomes visible in the car window, holding the gun and looking grim.

Alarmed, Sam spins around to see Bobby holding the shotgun on him. "Uh, uh, Sam. The only place you're going is back inside with me," he says, aiming for his usual gruff tone, but it comes out tense and afraid, because this is Sam he's got at gunpoint, little Sammy who isn't so little any more but who he has known since he was a child, has watched grow up, and the wrongness of it is awful.



Sam just stands there staring miserably at him, looking like death warmed over, so distraught it takes him a moment to find his tongue for what he wants to say.

"No," Sam manages to choke out at last. He's so horribly lost and confused – we have seen his inner turmoil – but he is determined not to go back to the panic room, determined to finish what he has started, no matter what. It is all he has left to cling to.

Bobby almost groans in despair. "Dammit, boy!" he moans, on the verge of tears.

Sam is also on the verge of tears. "You won't shoot me, Bobby," he murmurs, stepping closer.

Bobby clutches the shotgun anxiously, afraid both for himself, because who can tell what Sam might do, and for Sam if he won't back down – and probably for Dean as a result of any possible outcome of this standoff, and I love him all over again for dealing with this himself instead of waking Dean up, for allowing him that tiny amount of respite. "Don't test me!"

"You won't do it," Sam unhappily insists, stepping closer still, right up against the barrel of the gun. "You can't do it."



He looks and sounds disappointed, despairing, almost, as if he wishes that Bobby would just end it all for him right now. As if part of him, the part that believes he is a monster who should be stopped, wants to be ended – wants the decision and responsibility to be taken out of his hands, because he can't and won't do it himself. He doesn't know what is right or what is wrong any more, but he can't stop unless someone else stops him, and suspects that death is the only thing that can help him now.

Bobby fights back tears. "We're trying to help you, Sam," he chokes out.



Sam takes hold of the gun barrel and lifts it higher, from his diaphragm to his sternum, holds it against his chest. "Then shoot," he challenges, struggling not to cry as he stares his old friend in the eyes, raw anguish written all over his face.



Oh Sam! My flailing knows no bounds.

But then again, if Sam really thinks it would be better if he was dead, if someone stopped him from doing this, why is he carrying on doing it? Surely that's his answer right there. Does he really still think it is the right thing to do, wants to be ended because he doesn't want to have to face the consequences (becoming a monster, having Dean think him a monster, hell and damnation and all the rest of it) but won't otherwise give up because he genuinely believes it is the only hope for the world, so that stopping him now damns the world but at least takes the poisoned chalice from his hands? Or is it just that he can't give up because he truly doesn't know how to step aside from the path he has committed himself to, because there is nothing left for him but his revenge? Or is it all the demon blood talking, that he can't give up because his need for the blood is too great, and that is why he longs for the surcease he cannot give himself?

Bobby gazes at him in despair…and Sam uses that moment of indecision to snatch the shotgun out of his hands and lay him out with it in one smooth, vicious movement.

Damn!

Okay, so how much of that despair was genuine, and how much was an act to suck Bobby in and get the gun off him. Only Sam will ever know.

Sam looks devastated, utterly distraught at the low he has sunk to, as he flings the shotgun down alongside Bobby and turns back to the car. That distress doesn't stop him doing it, though. For whatever reason, he really believes that he has to do this, no matter who stands in his way; he has to be right and they have to be wrong, or it has all been for nothing, everything starts to unravel, and the prospect of that is unbearable.

Moments later, Sam hotwires the Chevelle to life and drives away, leaving Bobby lying unconscious on the ground.



Panic room. Morning

Together, Dean and Bobby unlock the panic room to investigate how Sam could possibly have escaped, Bobby with the beginnings of what promises to be an impressive black eye just starting to make its presence known.

"How the hell did he get out?" Dean wonders.

"Maybe he had help," Bobby proposes, gesturing toward the floor, where a devil's trap around the room made of cast iron has been broken. "Room full of busted devil's traps," he notes.

Dean is alarmed. "Demons? Ruby."

"That'd be my guess," Bobby nods.

Okay. So Castiel must have broken the devil's traps in order to implicate Ruby – yet another black mark against him, then, that deliberate misdirection rather than being at all willing to face the consequences for his actions. If the angels want Sam free, surely the least they could do is be honest about it rather than trying to frame the opposition! But when did Castiel have time to set up the false evidence? We didn't see the traps being broken when Sam left, and Castiel then went straight off to trap Anna, mere moments later.

"How did she even touch the door?" Dean puzzles and Bobby, equally confused, asks if she's got the mojo. "I didn't think so," Dean frowns, but Ruby has escaped from devil's traps before, so he knows that she has more power than he has seen, which means it remains a possibility. "I don't know, man."

"What difference does it make?" Bobby decides. "How he got gone ain't as important as where he got gone to."



Well said. Dean has made his decision, that preserving Sam's humanity is more important even than saving his life, and Bobby is behind him 100%, which means that finding Sam before he can take that final, irrevocable step is the immediate priority, rather than worrying about who set him free.

"Yeah, well, I'll tell you one thing. At this point, I hope he's with Ruby," Dean angrily declares, and Bobby bemusedly wonders why. "Because killing her is the next big item on my to do list," Dean growls.

You know, Dean has wanted to kill Ruby ever since he first heard of her, way back at the start of season three. He blames her for everything that has gone wrong with Sam – and rightly, too, as it turns out, although that does not remove Sam's own culpability.

Dean about turns and begins to storm back toward the stairs, and Bobby calls after him. "I thought you were on call for angel duty?" He is supportive but disapproving, because he isn't comfortable about Dean being tied up with the angels, even if it is, theoretically at least, a better connection than Sam's blood drinking tie to the demons.

"I am on call," Dean growls. "In my car, on my way to murder the bitch."



Fair point. The angels have demonstrated their willingness to watch over him at all times and keep him at their beck and call no matter where he is or what he is doing. Therefore he is free to do whatever he wants and go wherever he wants knowing they will be able and willing to call on him wherever he might be!

Bobby calls after him again. "One thing," and Dean stops again, turns back to hear what he has to say. "Sam don't want to be found," Bobby points out. "Damn near impossible to find."

Dean can't deny that, but isn't about to give up so easily. "We'll see."

Hotel

In the honeymoon suite of a random hotel in some anonymous town, Sam sits on the edge of the sofa with his clasped hands pressed against his mouth, shivering and twitching and jittering, because he might not be locked up any more, but that doesn't mean the symptoms of his withdrawal have gone anywhere. It's actually rather remarkable that he managed to drive safely!



We have now seen Sam's hallucinations spelling out his inner turmoil in detail, and through it all saw also that the voice he wanted to hear was the one telling him that he is right. Now, he isn't locked up any more, but he is still in withdrawal, so his mind must be foggy still. By escaping the way he did and assaulting Bobby to achieve his getaway, he has broken with his family big time, must believe that there can be no way back from that, so now more than ever he has to believe that he is right, can't allow himself not to be, even as he is horrified to see how low he has sunk and is terrified of being wrong. He cannot countenance the idea of having done all this for nothing.

Sam's fingers seem to be bothering him, maybe pins and needles or something, and he shakes his hand vigorously, stands up to twitch around the room, lost and afraid, and if he looked like death warmed over before, he's now graduated to hell on the rampage, all waxy and ashen and trembling.

There's a knock at the door and Sam hurries to answer it.

It's Ruby. Of course it is. Standing there with a massive smile plastered all over her face, as perky and chirpy as if she hasn't had him strung out for weeks, refusing to even return his calls, never mind supply the blood he needs, having got him so thoroughly hooked. "Honeymoon suite, really. I'm flattered," she chirps.



Sam ignores her. "Did you bust me out of that room?" he demands, shutting the door behind her, and I love that he asks that question, because he is Sam. He is lost and afraid, drowning, like Bobby said, but he is still Sam, still trying to figure things out. He hasn't lost that. He is clear-headed enough to be worried about how he got out of the panic room, and worried enough to ask Ruby about it before trying to wheedle a fix out of her, despite being so desperate for the blood.



"How could I, Sam? The whole thing is engineered to bite me in the ass," she shrugs, taking her coat off and generally making herself comfortable.

Everything about the dynamic between these two, from the way they talk to Ruby's absolute confidence in her welcome, it all speaks of their intimacy – and by intimacy I don't just mean the fact that they have slept together. They are close, completely comfortable in one another's company. Ruby knows Sam, inside and out, and he believes that he knows her. Once upon a time he might have claimed not to fully trust her, but everything about his interaction with her says otherwise. She has slid right behind his guard and he trusts her, whether he is willing to admit it or not, because he needs her too much not to, and – more dangerously – she knows that she can trust him, that he won't reject her now. He is dependent on her in too many ways, and she knows it, has worked hard to achieve it, slowly and subtly. She's got him right where she wants him.

Sam just stands there twitching at her. "Then how did I get out of there?" he frets.

"I don't know," Ruby shrugs again. "I don't want to know. You're out, that's all that matters." She smiles fondly. "I'm glad you're here."

"Yeah? Where the hell have you been?" Sam accuses, and she plays dumb, dismissing that she got here as quickly as she could. Sam's not letting her off the hook that easily, though. "I mean the past three weeks. I've been calling you!" he fumes, and it is good to see him questioning her on that point, acknowledging her share of responsibility for his current predicament.



Three weeks? So that's how long it's been since his last proper fix, not counting the random demon he drank from in The Rapture? Was that last meeting with Ruby before or after Jump the Shark, we wonder?

"I've been pretty deep in it, trying to dig out Lilith. Sometimes I can't sit around and check my voicemail," Ruby defends.

And Sam can't argue with that, because he wants her to find Lilith. It's the perfect defence, not least because he also doesn't want to think that she could be playing him, that her absence has been deliberate, because that is a whole other can of worms that he can't bring himself to face up to. If she could do that to him deliberately, get him hooked and then string him out to increase his dependence, that means that she is in control instead of him, that she has been manipulating him for reasons of her own all along, instead of being the good and faithful helper he wants to believe she is, supporting him so loyally when everyone else, including Dean, has turned away. Having broken with Dean, Ruby is all he has left, and he cannot bring himself to consider the possibility that he has made the wrong choice.

Unable to argue with her reasoning, not least because his mind isn't exactly clear right now, Sam stands there twitching miserably, and Ruby softens. "I'm sorry you're hurting," she gently says. "Really. I had no idea that Dean would do that to you."

Oh, that's a good one, turning the blame for Sam's withdrawal symptoms onto Dean, as if he wasn't already going into withdrawal before Dean learned the truth and locked him up, as if she hadn't caused that withdrawal by getting him hooked and then stringing him out. Sam's withdrawal symptoms were not caused by Dean locking him up, but by Ruby cutting off access to her blood, and there is no way that was not deliberate. She knew what it would do to him, knew that it would increase his dependence on her.

However, whether she did or did not anticipate how Dean would react upon learning the truth, his intervention has played into her hands perfectly, dividing the brothers and driving Sam to her, increasing his need and desperation.

"You and me both," Sam unhappily murmurs, completely willing, in his misery and despair, to join Ruby in blaming Dean rather than point the finger at his own actions that precipitated the crisis – and hers.

Ruby eyes Sam appraisingly, guessing that he didn't book the honeymoon suite just to impress her. He confirms this, explaining that Dean is going to come after him. "And he knows my habits, my aliases, everything. He knows exactly which motel I'd pick."

"Hence the room," Ruby concludes. Sam has tried to throw his brother off the scent by doing the opposite of his normal patterns, and he agrees that he is doing whatever it takes to shake Dean off his trail. Ruby points out in honeyed tones that it won't be easy, since Dean knows him better than anyone.

"Not as well as he thinks," Sam firmly states. There are echoes there of Lazarus Rising, in which Dean declared that there was nothing he didn't know about Sam, a statement that was proved both right and wrong, as Dean was able to track down his little brother with ease – but did not suspect a thing when Sam immediately started lying to him.

Ruby allows her brow to furrow in a show of concern. "You know, it's sad," she sympathises, stroking Sam's hair. "That things have gotten this bad between you two."

Gah, the condescension and hypocrisy there is unbearable, because she did this! She manipulated Sam into this position, slowly and carefully and very deliberately, engineered this divide between him and his brother, and she has the gall to make sympathetic noises about it. But, of course, those sympathetic noises are all part of the persona she has adopted, and are a large part of what has got Sam so completely and utterly sucked in.

That's enough. Sam's had all he can stand of the small talk – thinking about his estrangement from Dean is as unbearable as the symptoms of his withdrawal. He abruptly grabs Ruby's wrists and flings her down onto the bed, straddles her as if about to kiss her but then slowly slides his way back down over her body, running a hand across her stomach and down her leg…then pulls a knife out of her boot. And, yeah, it really is disturbing, the way the blood addiction is all tied up with sex, but Ruby has done that deliberately, too – it's all part of the intricate web of blood and sex and need and desire she has spun to tie Sam to her.



Sam's all lit up with breathless anticipation and hungry desire as he slices Ruby's arm open – and she smiles her pride and delight as he begins to drink her blood. He is all hers now, body and soul, and I still do not trust her for a second.



Singer's Auto Salvage. Day

In the absence of anything better to do, Dean is checking the Impala's engine to make sure she is in perfect condition for when he hits the road to chase after his recalcitrant brother.

Black eye fully evident now, Bobby wanders over to announce that the police have found his car – abandoned in an alley in Jamestown, North Dakota. Wiping his hands, Dean notes that Sam is switching up and asks if any other cars have been stolen in Jamestown. Two, says Bobby, the first being a 1999 Honda Civic, blue – nice and anonymous, just the way Sam likes. Dean immediately asks what the other one was, and Bobby snorts as he describes a white '05 Escalade with custom rims – a neon sign.



"You're right, he'd never take that," Dean thoughtfully muses. "Which is exactly why he did."

"You think?" Bobby looks sceptical. He may be the font of all knowledge, but he doesn't know everything. Dean is the resident Sam expert.

"I know that kid," Dean nods, echoing Ruby's earlier comment about how well he knows his brother, in contrast to Bobby's position, which in turn echoes Sam's, that maybe he doesn't know Sam as well as he thinks he does, all of it calling back to the same theme way back in Lazarus Rising. It's a theme that has been wound through the entire season, for that matter, playing heavily on the fact that the brothers do know one another inside out, in so many ways – but have also both changed, thanks to their circumstances and enforced separation, and in many other ways no longer know one another at all.



Also, you know, Sam really isn't a kid any more. He's 26 this year!

Dean busies himself closing the hood back up as he decides that he'll head in that direction, while Bobby stays here and hacks into the police databases. "We've got to find him, quick."

You know, I really love these two in a scene together – Jensen Ackles and Jim Beaver play off one another so very well. You can feel the layers of friendship and understanding; they are equals in so many ways, yet also have that pseudo father-son relationship that means so much to them both, and they work well together, make a good team. Dean does not doubt Bobby's support for a moment, and that's something he sorely needs.

Also, the close relationship between Dean and Bobby makes for a good mirror to the equally close, but twisted and dangerous relationship between Sam and Ruby, the one genuinely open, honest and caring, while the other gives only the impression of it.

Hotel

Right, so Sam and Ruby are now in bed together, the morning after. They are both under the sheets, but both appear to still be at least partially dressed, so who knows what they've been up to. They might have had sex, which wouldn't be surprising given how closely intertwined the blood and sex appear to be. Or they might just have gone to bed to get some sleep after Sam drank from her. We aren't told.



"Your appetite's gotten much bigger," says Ruby, lounging in bed eyeing Sam fondly, and she says it indulgently, like a proud mother watching her child grow, but Sam is alarmed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he suspiciously demands, pushing up onto his elbows, and I love that he finds that the idea of his increased appetite disturbing, because is means he isn't completely lost, not yet. He still wants oh-so badly to believe that he is doing the right thing but is also so very scared that he isn't.

Also, Sam looks much better already, now that he has had a hearty drink of demon blood. So, I can't help but wonder just how much he drank – and also how much blood Ruby's host body can afford to lose. I mean, we know that a demon can keep a host body animated indefinitely, but any injuries suffered by the host are not healed, they just don't kill until the demon has departed. Since Ruby's host body is already dead, it isn't as if any blood lost is likely to be replenished, so surely there must be a finite amount available there for Sam to drink from – and surely if that finite amount began to run out, it would start to show.

Or is the demon able to keep those dead organs functioning, so that blood loss can be compensated for and supplies replenished? Who knows? We are not told.

"Sam, relax. It's okay, it's good," Ruby laughs, still using that fond, indulgent tone of voice, and we saw from Sam's hallucinations that this is what Sam wants and therefore will respond to best – support and encouragement, being told that he is right and that everything is okay. He isn't in any frame of mind to question that reassurance; he craves it too much and is too afraid of being wrong. "It just means you're getting stronger, that's all," Ruby assures him. "It means you're strong enough to kill Lilith. Just in time, too, because the final Seals are breaking."

The final Seals are breaking, just at the moment that Sam gets strong enough to kill Lilith. That's very convenient.

Sam never questions Ruby's information, not once. He doesn't ask how a supposed outcast is so well informed, or how reliable her sources are. He doesn't wonder why she sounds excited about the final stages of the battle, rather than concerned about the fate of the world – and she's a demon, so she shouldn't care, of course, but she has declared herself on his side, professes to want to do the right thing by humanity, and he no longer doubts or questions that for a moment, even when her act slips a little.

"How many are left?" Sam asks, thinking hard. He believes, absolutely, that he had to be free and had to be strong for this battle, because he believes that this is his battle to fight, his alone, that no one else is capable of wresting victory from the demons now.



"Three, two," Ruby shrugs, and Sam is appalled, asks where the angels are – which is a very good question. He always believed it would all come down to him, but he thought the angels were at least trying. Ruby rolls her eyes. "Screwing the pooch, wherever they are."

You know, that the angels are not winning this war has been evident for quite some time – but no one seems to have ever thought to wonder why. They all seem completely willing to accept the angels as either incompetent or grossly outnumbered and question their apparent defeat no further than that.

"The point is that it's looking more and more like we're getting down to the final Seal," Ruby continues, a little too cheerfully. "And I found out something big."

Head still full of appalled thoughts of how close they are to the end of everything, Sam distractedly asks what. Again, he never questions the timing, never questions the coincidence of Ruby finding all this out only now. He never questions her tone, which is teasing and playful, as if dangling a carrot in front of a donkey to make it go faster. He just accepts every single word that she says.

"Seal 66," says Ruby. "It can't be broken by just any demon – only Lucifer's first can do it." Sam doesn't understand, doesn't know who Lucifer's first is, so Ruby smiles and enlightens him. "Demon Sunday School story. God prefers humans to angels. Lucifer gets jealous, and then he gets creative. He twists and tempts a human soul into the very first demon, as a 'screw you' to God. It's what got him locked up in the first place."

A human soul, twisted and tempted into a demon…it sounds horribly like what Ruby has been doing to Sam all these months, seducing him and tempting him down an ever-darker path, feeding him demon blood, which has given him demonic powers and led to demonstrable physiological changes. Yet the parallel passes Sam by completely, so focused is he on the point Ruby is making with regard to the impending Apocalypse. His jaw drops. "That was Lilith?"

"She's way older than she looks," Ruby nods.

Sam's eyes light up with possibility. "So…if Lilith is the only one who can break the final Seal – if I get to her in time…?"



"Then Lucifer never busts out of his cage. Exactly," smiles Ruby.

Hook, line and sinker.

I'm not going to get into the logistics of how the Seals work – or don't work – as a lock for Lucifer's cage, or how ridiculous it is. I will, however, point out how very convenient it is that the exact thing Sam wants to do, a goal he initially set his heart on purely to avenge his brother, now turns out to be the exact thing that will apparently, according to this demon, who has been egging him on all the way, prevent Armageddon and save the world.

Sam still does not question Ruby's information for a moment. He doesn't question the coincidence of it, the convenience of the timing, that Ruby has just learned all this now, right at the death. He trusts Ruby completely and does not doubt her for a single second. It never once occurs to him that she might have been grooming him for this exact moment, slowly and carefully manoeuvring him into position like a pawn on a chessboard and conditioning him to jump at the opportunity she has now presented him with.

Sam is absolutely delighted that it all sounds so straightforward now: kill Lilith and save the world. "Great. You figure out where she is?"

Ruby rolls her eyes again, grumbling, "That bitch can hide," because it wouldn't do to make it look too easy, but then she adds, "But I finally have a lead on someone who might be able to help us."

Again, Sam doesn't spare so much as a thought to wonder at the coincidence of her finding this lead only now, at the crucial moment. He just waits with baited breath for her to continue.

"I closed in on a member of Lilith's entourage," Ruby explains, adding with an amused grin, "You might call it a…personal chef."

"Chef? Seriously?" Sam frowns, nonplussed by the idea. "What does she eat?"

Talk about setting it up for Ruby! She smirks. "You don't want to know."

He could probably guess, though, since the last time he met Lilith she mentioned how much she missed the old days when it was 'all baby blood, all the time'…

Hospital

In a random hospital someplace, a couple of nurses pedeconference through the halls gossiping about an incident at another hospital nearby where a neonatal nurse walked "right off the unit with two babies" after having worked there for 17 years with an unimpeachable record, and now claims not to even remember what happened.

Yeah, that screams demonic possession loud and clear, even if Ruby hadn't set up the segue into this scene!

The nurses wander into their own neonatal unit and make googly eyes at all the babies therein. "They're just delicious," declares the brunette, her eyes shining demon black.

Hotel

Sam's getting dressed, post-shower, his still damp hair all slicked back. A shame, really, that he's only got the sweaty old clothes from his panic room incarceration to wear! "So, a demon gourmet nurse. You sure?" he checks.

"She'll be there. Graveyard shift tomorrow night," Ruby tells him, all wide eyed and innocent. And it is still so convenient, too convenient, that she just happened to find this out just now, that this demon just happens to be accessible right at the moment they need her, yet Sam doesn't question it for a moment. He is completely blinkered, with his goal in sight – his focus is always so absolute, and it has always been as much a weakness as a strength, now perhaps more so than ever.

"In the meantime, if you're going to be strong enough to kill Lilith, you're going to need more than I can give you now," Ruby announces.

More than she can give him? Again I wonder how blood loss works for a demon. They can keep dead bodies animated for months, after all. So is the presence of blood in the body important? Does Ruby's body just not have enough blood left in it for him to drink, a purely logistical issue if lost blood is not replaced, or is it that she can't afford to lose as much as Sam needs to take, at least if she wants to continue using this 'socially conscious body'?

Sam fidgets and lets out a long breath, and Ruby stands to hold out her knife to him. "Sam? Come on. It's okay."

"I know," he mumbles. "I will. I get it. It's okay. It's just…I wish he trusted me, you know."



Oh man, Sam. He barely even noticed that Ruby just said he has to bleed a person dry – which, shades of Mystery Spot, there, and he was totally willing to do it then, too. Sam is scary when he sets his mind on something. The suggestion that he bleed a demon and its host completely dry doesn't really bother him, it's just another step down that slippery slope, and he's already gone so far that he's just about given up on himself anyway, so what does it matter. It's the fact that he has lost his brother that bothers him. Dean was the one sacrifice he wasn't willing to make, the one thing he wasn't prepared to give up, and now that the break has been made it is devastating for Sam, even though he was the one who made that break.

It is heartbreaking to look at Sam's position now, especially knowing that he has done this to himself, trapped himself hopelessly in a web of his own making. Because Dean did trust him, which is all Sam is asking for here, but it was Sam himself who destroyed that trust, a little more with every lie that he told, and he kept telling himself it was worth it, that it didn't matter if Dean didn't trust his word as long as he still trusted him to be Sam, that it would be over soon and then they could rebuild. But the one has a knock-on effect on the other. Dean cannot trust Sam's word, because all those months of lies have a cumulative effect, because Dean has no way of knowing whether or not there might still, even now, be more that Sam hasn't owned up to – because he was lying to hide the fact that he was drinking demon blood. And the fact that Sam has been drinking demon blood and hiding that fact means that it is now impossible for Dean to trust Sam's judgement, because he can't tell if it is really Sam or the demon blood talking at any given moment, cannot trust Sam to truly be Sam for as long as he remains under that dark and dangerous influence.

But Sam wants his brother so very much. If Dean trusted him to at least be trying to do the right thing, gave his approval, his blessing, then Sam could truly believe that everything was going to be all right – it would be the validation he needs to trust himself. Without that, all those doubts and fears we saw via his hallucinations remain, albeit repressed as hard as he possibly can.

"I'm sorry," says Ruby, eyeing her feet.

"I just hope," Sam falters. "You know, when all this is over. I hope we can fix things."

Oh, Sam. I'm not entirely sure, though, whether he says 'we can fix things' or 'he can fix things' – is he hoping that they can still rebuild together somehow, if only they can get past this final hurdle of Lilith and the Apocalypse, or is he placing all his faith in Dean to fix everything when it is all over because Sam doesn't expect to be able to do it himself? Either way it is touching, demonstrating clearly how much the estrangement hurts and that Sam does still have at least a little hope that the estrangement doesn't have to be permanent. However, Sam is still not really acknowledging his own culpability, the fact that Dean didn't just wake up one day and decide not to trust him any more, but that Sam himself broke that trust through his own choices and actions. He remains mired deep in denial.

Singer's Auto Salvage/Impala

Bobby announces to Dean via phone that the cops have found the stolen Escalade in a ditch outside Elk River. Dean is only a couple of hours away. Bobby has also pulled up a weather map and made some calls. "There's a town not far from there," he explains. "Cold Spring. Lighting up with demon signs."

Dean agrees that this sounds like a good place to look.

Bobby looks thoughtful for a moment, and then decides that this is too important not to stick his nose in again. "Hey, listen," he opens, and Dean asks what. "Us finding Sam," he counsels. "It's got to be about getting him back, not pushing him away."

"Right," Dean says in a small, tight voice.

"I know you're mad, Dean," Bobby continues. "I understand; you've got a right to be. But…I'm just saying. Be good to him anyway. You've got to get through to him."



I love Bobby so much for trying so damn hard to see both sides, for acknowledging that Dean has every right to be furious but for also being realistic enough to give such practical advice. And I love that he is saying this as much for Dean's sake as for Sam's, because he heard what Dean said earlier and understands how badly this could turn out. If they are too late, if Sam bolts and takes that final step, crosses that irrevocable line, then they might be forced to put him down like a dog, and I have no doubt that Bobby is as scared of what that would do to Dean as he is worried for Sam's future. Hence the advice: be good to him, talk him down like a skittish horse, even if anger and condemnation are what he deserves, because saving him is more important than rebuking him.

It's a lot easier said than done, however.

Hotel

Sam exits the honeymoon suite and wanders off around a corner.

Dean is promptly revealed to be lurking around another corner, having apparently had no trouble whatsoever tracking his brother down to this hotel and this room, despite all Sam's efforts at throwing him off the scent by doing the exact opposite of what he would normally do – it was enormously easy for Dean to predict that move and pick up the trail anyway, proving just how well he does know his brother after all.



Dean lets himself into the honeymoon suite, where he finds Ruby busily packing her bag. I guess she had a change of clothes with her, then, even if Sam didn't. Despite all her demonic mojo, she seems surprised to turn around and find Dean right behind her, demon-killing knife in hand, and just barely manages to defend herself in time, wrestling with him for the knife and looking scared.

Dean gets Ruby up against the wall and they grapple, the knife pointed right at her, Ruby for some reason just barely able to hold it at bay, never mind push Dean away so she can escape. Dean looks grim and determined – he really wants this demon dead – and Ruby looks afraid for her life.

But I have absolutely no doubt that Ruby is faking her apparent vulnerability in this fight. She is a demon and she has super-strength; we have seen it demonstrated on numerous occasions, although granted most of those were back in season three. She has fought hand-to-hand with Dean before, so we know that he is physically no match for her demonic strength – he beat her that time only by luring her into a devil's trap. Yet here she allows him to overpower her and seriously threaten her life, presumably for the sake of staying in character for Sam, even though there is no real reason for him to come back and save her, since the fight isn't that loud and he only just left.

Clearly Sam's errand wasn't that time-consuming, though, or maybe he forgot something, for he does return at the crucial moment. Charging back in, he wrenches the knife out of Dean's hand and shoves his brother to the ground, gasping, "No!" because losing Ruby is unthinkable now. It is a gut reflex, physically assaulting his brother to defend a demon, and not the first time he has instinctively protected her against Dean, choosing the demon over the brother. Ruby owns him, body and soul. She's got the blood he needs and she gives him the support and encouragement he craves, enabling him in both addiction and obsession. However much he wants Dean, he needs her. He needs her so much that he cannot see anything else.

"Just take it easy," Sam breathlessly mediates, Ruby lurking warily behind his shoulder. She really is playing the image of the damsel in distress for all she is worth, all for Sam's benefit.



"Well, it must have been some party you two had going," grunts Dean, hauling himself back to his feet. "Considering how hard you tried to keep me from crashing it. Well, solid try, but here I am."

There's a weird camera angle on Dean here, which is repeated a few times during the scene – presumably to give an impression of how he is coming across to Sam, looming and menacing, just as the hallucination version of him did, imagination and reality colliding. There is no reason for Sam's vision to be distorted, since he is no longer in withdrawal, but the use of harsh angles on both from time to time in this scene is perhaps symbolic of how neither brother understands the other any more, each seeing the other as a threat to what he wants to achieve.

"Dean, I'm glad you're here," Sam calmly says.

He sounds so reasonable, which combines with the weird angle to make Dean look like the crazy one, locking his brother up and attacking his girlfriend. This is Sam's perspective, from which his actions are entirely logical and supported by a string of justifications, all doubts firmly repressed.

Not expecting this reaction, given that Sam ran away and then went to such lengths to hide from him, Dean frowns slightly.

"Look," Sam continues. "Let's just talk about this."

Oh, check out Ruby rolling her eyes behind his back – in plain view of Dean, as well, although he doesn't call her on it. She's got Sam and that's all that matters to her now; he's at the point where he will choose her over Dean, has to choose her, so it doesn't matter if she outs herself to Dean.

"Soon as she's dead, we can talk all you want," Dean assures his brother, all choked up and desperate.

Silence. Sam isn't going to give Ruby up, not even for Dean. He trusts her and he needs her and he cannot see past that. Even after everything the brothers have been through together, Ruby has become a higher priority in Sam's life than Dean.

"Ruby, get out of here," he tells her.

"She's not going anywhere," Dean immediately, furiously insists, reflexively starting toward Ruby once more, only for Sam to block his path, still exuding the air of a mediator searching for common ground to settle the dispute reasonably.

Ruby doesn't wait to hear any more, just takes off, like Sam told her to, still playing the damsel in distress for all she is worth and trusting completely that no matter what Dean says Sam isn't going to reject her now.

Dean stares from the departing demon back to Sam in despairing disbelief. "She's poison, Sam!" he despairingly protests.



"It's not what you think, Dean," Sam oh-so reasonably insists, except that it is, it is exactly what Dean thinks, but Sam can't see it, he is so, so convinced.

"Look what she did to you!" Dean flails, absolutely frantic. "I mean, she up and vanishes weeks at a time! Leaves you cracking out for another hit!"

I really like how they've made Sam look so reasonable and Dean so agitated here, and that it absolutely does not mean that Sam is right and Dean is wrong, quite the reverse – it makes for such fascinating contrasts and comparisons. Sam is riding the high of a recent fix and has had a good night's sleep, whereas Dean probably hasn't eaten or slept properly in days; Sam has both made his choice and made what peace he can with the consequences thereof, whereas Dean is staring down the barrel of his worst nightmare, completely powerless to prevent it. It is reminiscent of Jump the Shark, in which Dean was likewise agitated and Sam cool and calm in comparison, and there too Dean's deep emotional distress was a far healthier reaction to the situation than Sam's equanimity.

It's also interesting to see the way Dean here places all the blame for Sam's condition and situation squarely on Ruby's shoulders, in much the same way that Ruby earlier blamed Dean for Sam going into withdrawal. In Ruby's case, it was in her own interests to deepen the divide between the two brothers. In Dean's case, it ties in with him telling Sam back at the start of the episode that it isn't his fault – that the blame lies with the demon blood Sam has got himself addicted to, the blame lies with Ruby for getting him hooked and then stringing him out. Dean keeps trying to tell Sam that it isn't his fault, and I suspect that in this instance it is partly connected to Bobby telling him to be good to Sam rather than accusing or blaming him in any way, but is mostly to do with Dean's need to believe that Sam is a victim in all this rather than a consenting participant. Sam is teetering on the brink of becoming the monster he never wanted to be, and Dean cannot bring himself to believe that his brother could have done it on purpose, with his eyes wide open, so reasons that if he was manipulated into it, if he doesn't know what he is doing, then it isn't his fault, and that means he is still redeemable.

"She was looking for Lilith!" Sam declares, with all the fervour of a true believer, starting to get heated now and ignoring the fact that he himself attacked Ruby for stringing him out, because he believed the excuse she gave for it – he needed to believe the excuse she gave for it, because he needs her too much to let himself think otherwise.

Dean actually gasps his incredulity that Sam would swallow that excuse. "That is French for manipulating your ass ten ways from Sunday," he very rightly points out, flailing.

"You're wrong, Dean," Sam insists. He still sounds completely calm, completely reasonable. He is so very sure. It all makes perfect sense to him, somewhere inside that messed up head of his, and he can't understand why Dean won't see it.

Dean shakes his head, almost on the point of tears. "Sam, you're lying to yourself," he pleads, stepping closer. "I just want you to be okay."

Oh, Dean. His face! He's just so completely, utterly devastated, and he isn't afraid to let Sam see it, either, doesn't even try to hide, just lets all that raw, naked emotion flow freely. He's breaking my heart!

This is the oh Dean oh Sam episode to end all episodes!

"You would do the same for me, you know you would," Dean implores, appealing desperately to Sam's fraternal regard in hopes of being able to talk him down that way – but both brothers are hypocrites in that they will each do to themselves what they would not tolerate for the other.

And so far, let us note, Dean is following Bobby's advice wholeheartedly, pleading with Sam on the basis of brotherly regard and trying to appeal to his reason, being good to him, instead of condemning and judging him for what he has done. Carrot instead of stick.

Sam sighs and has to look away, and he's starting to get teary as well, now, because he wants reconciliation with his brother so desperately but cannot bring himself to give up Ruby and his quest. "Just listen," he begins, and then realises that he's still holding the demon-killing knife, which probably isn't a good idea if he's going to start waving his hands around while he talks, so he throws it down onto the bed before carrying on. "Just listen for a second. We got a lead on a demon close to Lilith. Come with us, Dean. We'll do this together."



Oh, Sam. Look at his face, all lit up with hope, and he's completely fooling himself, cloud cuckoo land. He told Ruby that he wanted Dean to trust him, wanted to be able to rebuild their relationship – and now Dean has turned up, has come after him when Sam had thought the break must surely be irrevocable. So somewhere between there and here he has conjured up this little fantasy of him and Dean and Ruby all hunting Lilith together, with Ruby feeding him blood to keep him strong, and Dean not worrying about it because he trusts Sam and Sam trusts Ruby, and then they can kill Lilith together and all live happily ever after… And it is never going to happen, it is wrong and it is futile, but Sam is so damn hopeful all of a sudden. He wants so desperately to believe that they can fix things somehow, that they can regain what they had while still accommodating Ruby's position in his life. He was at rock bottom when he escaped from the panic room, but Dean has come after him with words of sorrow rather than anger, has not rejected him completely, and that has allowed him to hope.

Oh, and then Dean's face, so horribly grief-stricken. "That sounds great," he chokes out, and Sam huffs out a little breath of delight that his brother agreed so easily…but then Dean continues, "As long as it's you and me. Demon bitch is a deal breaker – you kiss her goodbye, we can go right now."



Oh, and then Sam huffs again, but this time with pure frustration that Dean won't give in on this point, refuses to accept Ruby when Sam needs her so much, because it is all so very clear to Sam right now, the rightness of it, this clear path leading him to Lilith, just as he always wanted – almost as if it was meant to be – he's not questioning it at all. He sighs. "I can't," he says, and Dean has to turn away, fighting back tears of dismay and despair. Sam tries to explain. "Dean, I need her," he insists. "To help me kill Lilith! I know you can't wrap your head around it, but maybe one day you'll understand!"

With his back to his brother, Dean wipes a hand over his face and despairs. If he can't talk Sam down, if his brother is so far gone that no amount of reasoning will get through, if Sam persists in trusting a demon over his own brother…there is just nothing Dean can do about it. He can't keep Sam physically restrained indefinitely, that much has been proved, but he also can't just stand by and watch his brother take that final, irrevocable step to damnation.

"I'm the only one who can do this, Dean!" Sam declares, clinging to that statement as the ultimate justification for everything he has done. Ruby said it, so it must be true, he is sure of it.



Dean frowns and turns back around, and hang on – is this the first time he's heard Sam using this argument? I think it might be. "No, you're not the one who's going to do this," he says, voice little more than a whisper, the emotional strain is so great. Dean does not want to be a hero and doesn't believe that he can be, but he will do whatever it takes to prevent his brother turning himself into a monster, even if it means going head to head with Lilith herself in Sam's place. He has been assured that if he does that, Sam will be spared.

"Right. That's right, I forgot," Sam oh-so scornfully mocks. "The angels think it's you."

Oh, damn, the derision there is painful. Blinded by his own circumstance and needs, he has come to think so little of Dean, thinks it absolutely ludicrous that anyone should think his broken brother capable of winning a battle, let alone stopping an Apocalypse, and there is so much anger and resentment feeding into that attitude, it is chilling. And, you know, Dean himself hasn't been what you'd call happy about having that burden laid on him and doesn't especially believe himself capable, but Sam's contemptuous attitude is a real kick in the teeth, because Dean has at least been chosen for this by the supposed side of good, for a very specific reason, rather than choosing it for himself, full of pride and arrogance, listening to the lies of a demon, and then all but turning himself into a monster in the pursuit of that self-imposed goal.

This is the turning point in the conversation for Dean. He has followed Bobby's advice up till now, has been good to Sam, attempted to reason with him, but that one really stings. Sam has belittled him too many times already. He lifts an eyebrow. "You don't think I can?" he asks, too calm.

"No. You can't," Sam rather condescendingly declares. Sheesh. He wants to receive fraternal solidarity and support, but is not willing to offer any. At least Dean isn't declaring Sam useless; he is saying that he should not continue down his chosen path, a different argument entirely. "You're not strong enough," Sam continues, and he is back to sounding oh-so rational, as if trying to reason with a recalcitrant and dim-witted child.



And we're back to that same conversation Sam had earlier with his hallucination of Dean. Then, Sam's subconscious was casting doubt upon Sam's own ability to stop the Apocalypse. Here, having quelled those doubts, Sam remains firm in his convictions that Dean can't stop the Apocalypse. That they might perhaps be able to achieve it together does not seem to occur to him, nor that there might be a way of achieving it that doesn't involve the demonic powers that Sam wields and Dean doesn't, because that would render everything he has done to himself pointless, and he cannot allow that. He was willing to let Dean come with him, as long as it was still Sam's plan they were pursuing; wanted Dean's blessing and emotional support, but not his help. It has to be Sam's battle and Sam's victory, achieved Sam's way. He is not willing to compromise at all – my way or the highway. If Sam is strong and right, then Dean has to be weak and wrong. No middle ground.

Power corrupts. Sam has been given a taste of truly immense power, and it now affects the way he perceives anything and everything around him, his brother included.

Dean fumes. "Who the hell are you –?" he begins, an ominous note to his voice.

"I'm being practical, here," Sam insists, still sounding oh so reasonable, but then beginning to sound fierce and desperate again as he continues, "I'm doing what needs to be done."

We saw Sam's hallucinations earlier, that house of cards he has built of his justifications. He cannot risk it all coming down. That is why he cannot allow his resolve to waver now.

"Yeah? You're not going to do a single damn thing," Dean counters. He is getting angry now. Sam goaded him and he is rising to it, frustration levels too high to remember Bobby's advice.



But that doesn't mean that what happens is Dean's fault because he is unable, in the heat of the moment and the throes of his despair, to remain as gentle as Bobby advised him to be; that argument would take all the responsibility from Sam. Sam is responsible for every choice that he has made; whatever Dean has or hasn't done – not trusting him, being angry with him, dying – Sam always had the option of choosing another route. No, this is not Dean's fault.

"Stop bossing me around, Dean!" Sam shouts.

Sam has never liked being told what to do or not do. He needs to feel that he is in control of his own life, making his own decisions, now more than ever. He chose to do this and intends to follow it through, because he believes that only then will it all have been worthwhile. He certainly is not prepared to back down just because he has been told to.

Sam wants self-determination. Dean wants to keep Sam safe. Those have been fundamental characteristics of the two brothers pretty much ever since we first met them – and those two goals have never before been so diametrically opposed.

Sam strives to calm himself back down, to regain his reasonable poise before continuing, but he's still flailing desperately as he says his piece: "Look. My whole life – you take the wheel, you call the shots, and I trust you because you are my brother. Now, I am asking you – for once, trust me."



Oh boys, oh boys, oh boys. Sam's desperate plea for his brother's trust is heartbreaking, and yet…'for once'? He makes it sound as if Dean has never trusted him, and yet Dean used to trust Sam absolutely implicitly – he trusted in Sam's goodness and integrity a hell of a lot more than he trusted in his own, even. It was Sam who destroyed that, through his actions. Dean didn't choose to stop trusting him.

Sam needs Dean's trust so desperately – needs Dean to trust that he is doing the right thing, or at least that he is trying to do the right thing – but he has robbed himself of that trust on all levels. Dean wants equally desperately to be able to trust his brother, but knows that he can't, both because of the lies and because of Ruby and the demon blood, and it is heartbreaking.

The bottom line is that it is absolutely impossible to trust the word of an addict. Dean absolutely cannot trust Sam after all the lies he has told, after the way he has behaved, the clouded judgement he continues to display – not to mention the blind faith he places in the word of the demon who created his addiction in the first place, especially given that a major theme of this show has always been that blind faith is not a good thing.

Dean gazes sorrowfully at his desperate little brother. He can't give what Sam is asking for, no matter how much he would like to, because he believes, absolutely, that Sam is wrong. This is not about judging Sam as a person, it is about the fact that however lucid he might appear and however lucid he might believe himself to be, Sam is under the influence of the demon blood he has consumed, and there is no way for Dean to know just how much that might be affecting his judgement.

"No," he says at last, and Sam is crushed. "You don't know what you're doing, Sam," Dean insists. He needs to believe that, needs Sam to be misguided rather than actively choosing this dark path with full disclosure, every bit as much as Sam needs to believe that he knows exactly what he is doing.

It is a hard one to judge, in the end, because we, too, have no way of knowing how much of Sam's judgement is his own and how much he has been unknowingly influenced by the demon blood he has consumed – not to mention Ruby's seductive manipulations. At the end of the day, however, Sam is an adult, responsible for his own choices, no matter what influences might have fed into them.

Sam is infuriated by the suggestion that he is not in complete control of his actions and decisions, refuses to admit even to himself that the demon blood could be affecting his judgement in any way. "Yes, I do!" he insists, like a child stamping his foot in a tantrum.

"Then that's worse!" Dean shouts back, raw and agonised and just too damn distressed to censor himself.

"Why?" Sam cannot see it. It all makes such perfect sense to him. "I'm telling you –"

"Because it's not something that you're doing, it's what you are!" Dean shouts, his eyes huge and agonised, just raw, raw emotion: anguish and grief and despair. "It means –"

He cuts himself off before he can say any more, but it is too late, the damage has been done.

Now, Dean is not an articulate guy. He has never been articulate. We need to remember that at this point. He has always struggled to express what he is feeling, here, in the heat of the moment and depths of his distress, more so than ever.

In the mythology of this show, the word 'monster' is generally defined as 'not human'. Many monsters on the show have started out as human, only to cross a line and become something else, often as a result of what they eat – whether it be something they have chosen to eat, or something that was forced upon them without their consent. And there is usually no way back from that. It has been a recurring theme in the show since the earliest episodes of season one.

All through this episode Dean has been focused on the dangerous influence that Ruby and her blood wield over Sam, placing the blame for his brother's situation and actions squarely in that corner. He believes, quite rightly, that Sam has been led astray, manipulated and misguided until he no longer knows which end is up, and that the highs and lows of his addiction to the demon blood are clouding his judgement. And this terrifies him, because of what it could and mostly likely will lead to if it continues, because once that final line is crossed there is usually no way back. The only hope he has is that if Sam is merely misguided, then it is not yet too late to save him.

But if Sam insists that his decision-making is not influenced by the demon blood but that he is choosing this dark road fully conscious of all implications and consequences, if Sam knows exactly what he is doing, which Dean believes so strongly to be wrong, and intends to carry on doing it anyway, deliberate rather than misguided…then that makes everything infinitely worse. It is the difference between doing and being. A misguided Sam doing something monstrous without fully understanding it can still be saved from himself. But a Sam who is consciously choosing to become monstrous, at the behest of a demon? From where Dean is standing, chances are it is already too late.

Sam looks like he's been slapped in the face as he processes that statement, hallucination and reality crashing together. His eyes flood with tears and his lip curls. "No," he denies, shaking his head desperately.



It is unbearable. That was the worst hallucination of the lot, hearing Dean deny him, and now he seems to be hearing the same thing here, too. As messed up as he is, with a fresh hit of demon blood in his belly, hot on the heels of the trauma of withdrawal, he is incapable of discerning what lies behind his brother's words, instead projecting the worst case scenario of that vicious, vindictive hallucination onto the distraught man standing before him – none of which Dean has any way of knowing or understanding. He wasn't privy to what went on in Sam's head down in the panic room, doesn't know how close they have come to re-enacting his brother's hallucination.

Sam steels his nerve, wanting to hear the worst, to get it over with. "Say it," he demands.

Dean is beside himself. What does it mean if Sam chooses to do something monstrous of his own volition, no excuses about being misguided or misled? That was the question Sam asked him, the question he must now answer. "It means you're a monster," he laments.

The semantics and build-up are crucial here. Dean has never been articulate, has always struggled to express what he means. This is not the Dean of Sam's hallucination, casting judgement, declaring Sam that Sam is and has always been a monster. He's just answering Sam's question, albeit clumsily, trying to explain why he feels it is so much worse that Sam should claim full responsibility for his actions rather than acknowledge the influence the demon blood has had on him. This isn't Dean saying 'you are a monster, end of story', it is Dean expressing both of their worst fears about what this situation might mean, and not willingly, either, but because Sam has goaded him into it.

Dean has been flailing desperately throughout this scene as he attempts to talk Sam down. Drinking demon blood in order to gain demonic powers is flat out wrong; Dean is never going to believe otherwise. He has seen the physiological changes, the damage, with his own eyes, was paralysed with horror when he had to hold Sam down while he seized. He has long been on the receiving end of Sam's personality changes, of the harsh and ruthless attitude his brother has developed, the lies and deceit and the contempt. Sam has changed, and it was the demon blood that changed him.

Once upon a time Sam begged Dean to kill him if he ever turned into something he wasn't – and now he has not only done this to himself, but insists that he knows exactly what he is doing, that he has always known exactly what he was doing, and chose to do it anyway. To Dean that is absolutely horrific, because if Sam has deliberately done this to himself, has chosen to continue in full knowledge and acceptance of what the demon blood is doing to him, then it is already too late because he isn't Sam any more. The Sam who forced that promise out of his brother would never have chosen to become this. That is why Dean has insisted over and over that Sam doesn't know what he is doing and why he does not want Sam to claim full responsibility for his choices. He needs, for both of their sakes, to believe that there is still hope for his brother.

So, this is not a statement of judgement, 'I believe you are and always have been a monster, end of story'. No, this is question and answer: 'why don't you want me to say this?' 'Because of what it would mean to me, because it terrifies me.'

That's not what Sam hears, though. He doesn't see his brother's grief and despair, doesn't care that he had to force the words out of Dean, or that he is crying as he says it. All he sees is the rejection he feared and anticipated, and all he hears is what he wanted to hear, the word 'monster', confirming all his worst fears and expectations and therefore justifying him in making a complete break – giving him something to react against.

Oh, but Sam's face, the way he bites his lip and nods his understanding and has to turn away, absolute worst nightmare confirmed, not seeing the tear running down Dean's cheek.

Remember the 14 year old Sam of After School Special, lashing out at a bully for calling him 'freak' – his flashpoints really haven't changed that much in all the years since, and his reaction here is pretty much exactly the same. He has been called a name he doesn't like; it hurts, so he lashes out. Without sparing so much as another glance at Dean, he gathers himself, turns back and hits his brother as hard as he can. It's a reaction that is all about rage and revenge, self-loathing, and all those repressed doubts and fears we saw in his hallucinations, churning away inside – punishing Dean for his opinion of what Sam has done, because he can't punish himself without collapsing that fragile house of cards he has constructed from his justifications to protect himself.

Dean hits the ground hard and then slowly picks himself back up, tired and despairing and grief-stricken and furious and wearing that utterly blank expression that always signals an overload of emotion. And what he sees as he stands is Sam looking positively feral, twitching and jittering, absolutely spoiling for a fight. So Dean hits him in turn, lashing out in his grief and despair, and the fight is on.



Brother versus brother. Show has been setting this one up for a very long time now. And man, it hurts to see it!

Sam lets Dean get in a few hefty blows before fighting back – and it is worth noting that Sam barely so much as rocks on his heels, at least until Dean manages to shove him backward into the bathroom. Then Sam blocks the next blow and starts raining down a few of his own, and Sam, powered up as he is by the demon blood, hits hard enough to send Dean reeling, so he physically holds his brother in place for a few almighty blows to the head, before smashing his face into a mirror.



Dean takes a moment to regroup and regain his senses, and then slowly turns back to Sam, who is bouncing on the balls of his feet, spoiling for round two – he's got a bloody lip to counter Dean's bloody nose, but otherwise looks fresh as a daisy compared with his dazed and grieving brother. Rallying, Dean aims another punch at his brother, but Sam this time ducks the blow, grabs hold of him – and throws him bodily across the room!

Dean goes crashing through a wooden screen, down a few stairs, and lands heavily on his back atop a glass table, which smashes into smithereens.

The fight is over, no question. Dean is down, and he's not getting up again any time soon. He lies there coughing and gasping and in pain, and Sam stands over him, victorious and seething…



And then Sam drops to his knees to straddle his brother, wraps his hands around Dean's throat and starts to squeeze!



Panicking, Dean flails and flaps at Sam's hands, but is completely unable to push him away or break that death grip on his throat. Sam looks positively feral once more, vicious, squeezing harder and harder, and Dean's eyes start to roll back in his head, which is alarming – and then finally Sam lets go.

Whew!

Okay. The first thing I would like to say at this juncture is that although up until now the direction has been absolutely superb, I have a few issues with the direction of this segment of the scene, which fails to provide clarity on Sam's motivation for trying to kill his brother, clarity that we really needed. Was Sam still being swept along on the tide of his rage and despair, red mist over the eyes and all that? Had he completely lost control of himself to the point where he didn't really know what he was doing? Or was he fully aware of what he was doing but too caught up in his rage and despair to care? Was the demon blood influencing his thoughts and actions? What? Because the way the attack was directed makes it look disturbingly cold – calculated even. The fight was over; Dean was down and he wasn't getting up again. Sam had won, and there was a pause while he absorbed that fact, and only then did he attack his brother again, knowing him to be defenceless, without any clues to help us understand why. There are likewise no clues as to why he then stops again, nothing to indicate any sudden realisation of what he was doing.

And, you know, I have seen fans suggesting that Sam wasn't actually trying to kill Dean, he was just demonstrating his greater power, throttling him because he can, as a way of proving that he is stronger. But I really fail to see why those fans consider this a better interpretation than Sam losing his temper and trying to kill his brother in the heat of the moment. To me it is far, far worse to think that he would consciously and cold-bloodedly strangle his brother, while he was already on the ground and defenceless, not to kill him but as a calculated gesture, to demonstrate that he can, that he is strong enough to do anything he wants and Dean can't stop him. That interpretation does fit with the way he then releases his brother, point clearly made, but sends out all kinds of disturbingly abusive vibes, and however far gone he might be, I would prefer not to think that about Sam.

So, I prefer to project my understanding of Sam's state of mind in the rest of the scene onto his actions here. He is in absolute despair, believes that he has lost everything – he has lost his brother and he has lost himself. The massive internal conflict we saw playing out through his hallucinations showed us the emotional turmoil he's got churning away beneath the surface, and we know that he is repressing it for all he is worth, clinging desperately to the path Ruby has set him on because he needs so very much for it all to be worthwhile and can't see any other way out now. He sees it as a form of sacrifice, his life and soul for the salvation of the world – has to believe that sacrifice to be just and pure, because he also believes himself to be irreparably corrupted and hates himself for it, so that this sacrifice he seeks to make is the one lifeline he believes he has, the only thing that can possibly redeem him.

Dean's refusal to give Sam his blessing and his condemnation of what Sam has done to himself severely undermines Sam's walls of justification, and Sam can't handle that. Being completely unable to face up to the possibility that he could be so very wrong, and therefore unable to punish himself for what he has done, his self-loathing has to find another target – which is Dean, for daring to hold the mirror up to Sam and trying to make him look into it, so to speak. For not trusting Sam, for not supporting his choices – for dying in the first place and leaving him all alone with nothing but revenge and Ruby to hold on to. If Sam is to believe himself strong and right, then he also has to believe Dean to be weak and wrong; blinkered and confused as he is, he really does not see any other option. He's got all this pent-up rage and fury and despair churning around inside him in need of an outlet, and the outlet it finds is Dean.

I just really wish that the direction of the scene made it a little clearer what is going on in Sam's head at that moment. Also, I really hate the background music used for the scene. I suspect they intended it to convey discordant panic, but it just comes across as jarringly chirpy and out of place.

Whatever Sam's motivation, the image of him strangling his defenceless brother is powerful and deeply disturbing, demonstrating loud and clear just how far from the path of righteousness he has fallen – more especially since it hasn't been that long since Alistair crushed Dean's windpipe and he ended up on life support. Sam was deeply distressed over that, but now does pretty much the same thing himself, in a fit of pique. The show really is setting up a dramatic contrast between 'good' Dean and 'bad' Sam, with Sam here losing his temper and trying to kill his brother effectively just for calling him names, contrasted with all the times over the years Dean has categorically and consistently refused to even contemplate killing his brother, despite what at times has been massive provocation and even direct orders.

Having been released at last, Dean just lies there, recovering, choking and wheezing, and Sam stands up to tower over him again, lip curling with rage and derision – and what looks disturbingly like hate.

Remember what we saw in Sam's hallucinations. Which part of his tortured psyche is he listening to right now, as he projects his inner torment onto his brother, in the absence of any other target besides himself?

"You don't know me," Sam fiercely insists. "You never did. And you never will."

He wants that to be true, oh how he wants that to be true, because he so desperately doesn't want Dean to be right, but deep down inside is terrified that he is. Denial is all he's got to cling to.

And there is both truth and falsehood in the statement. Dean has just proved how very well he knows Sam by finding him so easily, and yet the Sam that Dean knows – or knew – would never have done the things he keeps doing. He is still Sam, but he has changed.

Sam strides toward the door and Dean desperately calls after him, gasping the words out, his voice totally thrashed, between the emotion and the strangulation. "If you walk out that door, don't you ever come back!"



Oh, damn. Oh, boys. Those are the same words that John spoke, all those years ago when Sam decided he was going to go to Stanford and no one was going to stop him. Is Dean even aware that he is echoing his father? Did he choose those words deliberately, in full awareness of the weight of their history, or did they rise up unbidden, through the haze of his physical and emotional distress? We have already seen that he is too distraught to censor himself any more, and that was before his brother tried to kill him.

We can only guess what kinds of emotions lay behind that ultimatum when John gave it. We know enough to know that the words were spoken in anger, but that that anger was fuelled as much by fear as by pride.

This gasping ultimatum choked out by Dean, lying on the floor, battered and bruised in body and spirit, is also driven by fear, as well as by despair and pain and aching, aching need, and it hinges on the word 'if'. He is asking, begging Sam not to go, to choose him over the demon – a last, desperate attempt to shock his brother into backing down, hoping against hope that if Sam can just be made to see how final and irrevocable a step he is taking, he will see sense and turn back, before it is too late. It is all about the choice being offered, one last chance for Sam to choose Dean instead of Ruby.

But although Sam wants Dean, he needs Ruby. In that sense, in the distortion and confusion created by his addiction to demon blood, the demon has long since become more important to him than his brother. He has already made his choice and cannot back down now, so instead of a desperate plea, he hears in Dean's ultimatum nothing but rejection, a continuation of the condemnation he heard earlier: you are a monster. Far from inspiring him to back down, it provides him with an excuse to walk away and a reason not to look back.

Sam pauses, looks down at his brother one last time, impassive, and then walks out that door. And it hits especially hard because we watch him go from Dean's perspective, looking up from the floor, being rejected and left behind.



Dean is left alone, lying on the floor in physical and emotional pain, to wallow in despair. He attempts to get up, or at least begins to, but can't quite manage it and instead just rolls onto his back again, fighting back tears of grief and despair.



Damn! That was one hell of a lead-in to the season finale!


August 2009


Back to top


Home