Fic: Combat survival (episode 10.15 coda)
Mar. 23rd, 2015 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zara_zeeI've only watched this episode once so far. There were some things about it that didn't quite gel: The sloppy assumptions about the parasite. Cole's overuse of nicknames. The lost opportunities - for Dean to address the fact that Cole tortured Sam, for Sam to bond with Kit's wife, to talk about his feelings, for Dean to take his shirt off.
The ep did make me think a lot about Sam and Dean as soldiers in a never-ending war and the impact that must've had on them.
--
Title: Combat survival
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zara_zee
Beta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 10.15
Word Count: ~500
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: Kit could’ve been saved. He hadn’t been turned; he’d just been infected.
--
The ringing phone’s a distraction, but it’s also a tenuous link to Dean and it makes him stretch his fingers out further, strain just that little bit harder, and he manages to turn the gun, to grip it.
The whip-crack of the gun shot is too loud in the suburban kitchen. Sam’s right ear fills with tar and the recoil makes his shoulder jar painfully against the floor. There’s blood spatter and brain matter on the kitchen ceiling and Kit slumps forward, a dead weight on Sam’s chest. A mist of red rain falls like wet dust onto his face and the job’s not done yet.
Sam pushes Kit off him and staggers to his feet. The parasites pour out, one at a time, and he stomps them to death with his size 13 boots. The widow—God, the widow—has crawled to her knees and is sobbing the quiet stoic tears of a military wife who’s been readying herself for this day since her wedding.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She ignores him completely and crawls to her husband; cradles him in her arms and rocks him lovingly.
The hot, sour lump settling in Sam’s gut feels a lot like failure and the call from Dean just cements the emotion.
Kit could’ve been saved. He hadn’t been turned; he’d just been infected. No different to black-eyed Dean. Sam just hadn’t tried hard enough. He’d been sloppy. He hadn’t tied him up properly. Hadn’t cared enough that he was dealing with a person.
He used to care so much. Used to pride himself on seeing the humanity in every type of creature. Now he refers casually to meatsuits and steadfastly ignores the vestiges of a victim’s humanity. It’s self-preservation. Combat survival. You can’t kill as many sentient beings as he’s killed and stay sane if you don’t shut down emotionally.
He thinks maybe she gets that. The soldier’s widow. Holding Kit the way he’d held Dean.
Cole gets it. That’s why he’s been calling them Sammy-boy and Deano. Ordinarily that would’ve pissed him off, but Sam remembers his dad’s war stories and knows the nicknames are a military thing; a symbol of brotherhood.
Cole has joined their war; has accepted them as comrades-in-arms. And he wanted them to feel that same brotherhood with Kit, to make them see him as ‘one of us’ not ‘one of them’; someone worth saving.
It worked. His failure to save a brother is weighing on Sam.
Dean tells him that sometimes you can do everything right and the guy still dies.
Sam hears the words his brother isn’t saying and understands finally why this one hit him so hard.
Sam told Cole that if his brother-in-arms was a monster, he would have to be put down. That rule will never apply to Dean, and maybe that makes Sam a hypocrite, but he doesn’t care. Dean may have resigned himself to a life marked by Cain, but he will never be something Sam hunts.
Sam is not Abel, but nor is he Cain. He will save Dean or kill them both trying, because his brother is a kill he has no wish to survive.
--
The ep did make me think a lot about Sam and Dean as soldiers in a never-ending war and the impact that must've had on them.
--
Title: Combat survival
Author:
zara_zeeBeta: Not beta’d
Genre(s): Episode coda
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Episode 10.15
Word Count: ~500
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing in the sand box.
Summary: Kit could’ve been saved. He hadn’t been turned; he’d just been infected.
--
The ringing phone’s a distraction, but it’s also a tenuous link to Dean and it makes him stretch his fingers out further, strain just that little bit harder, and he manages to turn the gun, to grip it.
The whip-crack of the gun shot is too loud in the suburban kitchen. Sam’s right ear fills with tar and the recoil makes his shoulder jar painfully against the floor. There’s blood spatter and brain matter on the kitchen ceiling and Kit slumps forward, a dead weight on Sam’s chest. A mist of red rain falls like wet dust onto his face and the job’s not done yet.
Sam pushes Kit off him and staggers to his feet. The parasites pour out, one at a time, and he stomps them to death with his size 13 boots. The widow—God, the widow—has crawled to her knees and is sobbing the quiet stoic tears of a military wife who’s been readying herself for this day since her wedding.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She ignores him completely and crawls to her husband; cradles him in her arms and rocks him lovingly.
The hot, sour lump settling in Sam’s gut feels a lot like failure and the call from Dean just cements the emotion.
Kit could’ve been saved. He hadn’t been turned; he’d just been infected. No different to black-eyed Dean. Sam just hadn’t tried hard enough. He’d been sloppy. He hadn’t tied him up properly. Hadn’t cared enough that he was dealing with a person.
He used to care so much. Used to pride himself on seeing the humanity in every type of creature. Now he refers casually to meatsuits and steadfastly ignores the vestiges of a victim’s humanity. It’s self-preservation. Combat survival. You can’t kill as many sentient beings as he’s killed and stay sane if you don’t shut down emotionally.
He thinks maybe she gets that. The soldier’s widow. Holding Kit the way he’d held Dean.
Cole gets it. That’s why he’s been calling them Sammy-boy and Deano. Ordinarily that would’ve pissed him off, but Sam remembers his dad’s war stories and knows the nicknames are a military thing; a symbol of brotherhood.
Cole has joined their war; has accepted them as comrades-in-arms. And he wanted them to feel that same brotherhood with Kit, to make them see him as ‘one of us’ not ‘one of them’; someone worth saving.
It worked. His failure to save a brother is weighing on Sam.
Dean tells him that sometimes you can do everything right and the guy still dies.
Sam hears the words his brother isn’t saying and understands finally why this one hit him so hard.
Sam told Cole that if his brother-in-arms was a monster, he would have to be put down. That rule will never apply to Dean, and maybe that makes Sam a hypocrite, but he doesn’t care. Dean may have resigned himself to a life marked by Cain, but he will never be something Sam hunts.
Sam is not Abel, but nor is he Cain. He will save Dean or kill them both trying, because his brother is a kill he has no wish to survive.
--
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