Fic: Propane

[spoons1899]

Title: Propane
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,000
Summary: Coda to 4.16 On the Head of a Pin. Dean is still weak and upset from his altercation with Alistair. Sam tries to help. Everybody angsts.
Author's Note: So I realize this is coming at an odd time, but I've been re-watching the forth season during the current season

Comments

[callistosh65]

Wonderful. You and me both with S4. I too am rewatching it and marvelling at just how good it is as a season. (For me it's right ther ebehind S2 as my favourite of the seasons so far) How much meat and angst they packed into the episodes at times! I watched this one last night and felt gut-punched all over again - and your coda fits in to how I see Sam's S4 mind-set perfectly. Full of an addict's justifications for why he's doing this, his "good intentions" as Pamela called him on in 'Death Takes a Holiday'.

And your broken Dean felt so true - what we could have seen if the camera had just kept rolling a little longer. The backstory you had him tell Sammy was ten kinds of heartbreaking.

[spoons1899]

Thank you so much! This season is definitely, for all it's angst, the cleverness of its storylines, just all of it. Originally this fic started out being about Dean… but then Sam just took over and surprised me a little bit with his douchiness, what with Dean having a breakdown, and he's too busy listing his justifications, as you say, but I liked how that fit with the season. A lot of people I know saw Sam as really arrogant and selfish, which I don't necessarily agree with, so I can't ever resist exploring what was going on in his mind during this time.

And Dean! He gets me every time at the end of the episode when he's so sad and little and weeping in the hospital bed!

Thanks for commenting!

[callistosh65]

Like you, I also don't see Sam as selfish in S4. Far from it, what's coming across in this rewatch is how increasingly he sees himself as Dean's protector, that Dean is weak, damaged from Hell. So he must man up and be the big brother... Even his quest for revenge is revenge for what Lilith did to Dean. Pure and simple. That he ends up warped and on a tragically misguided path to achieve this just makes you ache for him, not hate him.

[jennytork]

Yes, exactly.

[embroiderama]

OMG wow. Wow! I feel like this just ripped my heart out and shredded it and then put it back in with a band-aid, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

[spoons1899]

Thanks for the comment. Hopefully it was a band-aid with something awesome on it, like unicorns or Ninja Turtles.

[roxymissrose]

Oh gosh, that brought *tears*. Reminded me how awful that whole time was, with Dean twisted into horrible knots and Sam so damn sure that he was doing the right thing and so damn sure he was doing it to protect Dean that he never even noticed when it became all about him. Thank you for sharing this--it was just perfect.

[akadougal]

This hit me like a punch to the stomach. When Dean said he wished they'd blown up. I can just picture him saying that then. You captured the despair at the end of the episode perfectly. Powerful stuff.

[borgmama1of5]

Oh, god, this felt exactly like it must have happened in a scene that got cut!

And the mixed-up mess in Sam's head--that is just how I saw his behavior that season!