Damage Control 4x13 After School Special
The aftermath of the day stings as much as the array of small wounds scattered over Sam’s body. While he dabs at the stitches on his chest, one of them torn after his wrestle-match with the ghost-possed student, Sam battles with a confusing whirl of emotions. They’re reflected on his battered face in the bathroom mirror: a smattering of cuts above one eye; a split lip trailing a bruise down the side of his mouth; a swollen cheek bone - and the small stab wound over his breastbone, harmless-looking but surprisingly sore. His luck the blade caught on the bone and didn’t penetrate his lung.
His whole body feels twitchy, both tired and restless. There’s relief (and a certain amount of pride) that they saved the lives of a whole busload of highschool students. On the other hand, Sam had been complicit in creating the ghost that had wreaked such havoc. When he’d stood up to Dirk, back then in the 90s, he’d unknowingly turned a bully into a victim. He’d thought he’d at least saved Barry. Instead, both of them had ended up frightened, alone and - eventually - dead by their own hands.
Guilt churns in Sam’s guts although he knows that, back then, he’d done the best he could. He’d wanted to protect his friend Barry from Dirk - only to leave him alone and exposed to harm again when Dad had picked them up and whisked them away to a different town, a different hunt. He hadn’t known about Dirk’s sick mother and his problems at home. He’d been a kid, unable to see the bigger picture. Even if they’d stayed, would things have turned out differently? Maybe. But the choice hadn’t been up to Sam.
He does have a choice now, though. With Lilith breaking one seal after the other and Ruby offering to boost Sam’s powers, he has the choice to stand down or help save the world. Sam’s not an egomaniac. He knows he’s just a small cog in machinations that he can barely begin to understand. Angels. God. The celestial armies fighting Lucifer and his demons. His contribution to the fight won’t make a big difference. But it can make a difference. And maybe - just maybe - it can also purify his tainted blood.
“You need help with that?” Dean’s leaning in the doorframe, whiskey glass in hand. His drinking is still ongoing, and so are his nightmares. “ Looks like you tore your stitches.” He gestures at the blood lazily trickling down Sam’s naked chest.
“No, I can do it myself.”
“I know you can. But I’m right here.”
Sam dabs at the wound again with a fresh wad of toilet paper. It really is no big deal but, with the bone right underneath, sewing it up already hurt like hell the first time. Dean will make this quick.
“Not for that,” Dean says commiseratively. He steps into the bathroom to grab the already-open first aid kit from the sink and extract the suture kit. Unrolling it, he clucks his tongue. “We’re running low on prolene. And gauze. Jeez, way we’ve been going through our supplies, we need to make a run soon. Or start bleeding less.”
Sam huffs. Dean’s right. They’ve both taken a lot of hits lately with little time to heal in-between. The stitches in Sam’s arm, from their encounter with Alastair, only just came out, and Dean’s still favoring his recently dislocated shoulder. He may have come back from Hell with a do-over, all of his old scars vanished, but he’s certainly collecting new ones, including the gnarly handprint on his shoulder. And so is Sam.
“You wanna do this here or lay down?” Dean asks.
“Here’s fine.” Sam sits down on the closed toilet lid.
It’s a little awkward, Dean going down on one knee in front of him to put in the stitch, but they get it over with as quickly as Sam expected, with just a little twitching on his side.
“Good as new,” Dean proclaims when done. He tapes a patch of gauze over his finished work.
“Thanks.” Exhaling, Sam looks down at his chest, running his fingers over the tape to make sure it sticks. Then he reaches for the fresh t-shirt he’s laid out for himself and carefully slips it over his head and battered face.
“Funny that I can’t remember that Barry kid,” he suddenly hears Dean say. “Or the other one. What was it? Dirk the jerk?”
When Sam’s head re-emerges from the depths of his shirt, he sees Dean disinfecting the suture needle, back turned to him.
“You can’t?” Sam asks back. “Not at all?”
“No. I remember you getting into a fight. Hulking out on some kid. But that’s about it.”
Sam slides into a clean Western shirt. “I guess you had other priorities. Didn’t you have a girlfriend or something?” He seems to remember Dean hanging out with a pretty blonde. And a pretty brunette, for that matter. “You were pretty keen on getting out of town when Dad picked us up. What happened?”
Dean wraps up the suture kit and stows it away. “Nothing happened,” he says, in a way that tells Sam something did indeed happen, but he better not ask. “Place just sucked. That school was-” He makes a disgusted noise. “I remember you liking it, though. You kept fawning over that teacher. English, was it?”
Sam scoffs. “I didn’t fawn. I just liked him.”
It was true. As much as they’d hopped schools, with the faces and names of teachers blurring, he still held Mr. Wyatt in fond memory. He’d been the one who’d motivated Sam to apply for college. Made him feel seen and appreciated his academic talent - something his father had always regarded with derision. Mr. Wyatt had encouraged him to go his own way, make his own choices.
Well, it was time to make his own choices again. He could choose between what his family - Dean, Bobby - told him to do, put his psychic powers to rest and try to fight Lilith the good-old-fashioned Winchester way, with their bare hands. Or he could go his own way, use his gift, against his family’s advice - and prove their reservations wrong. He could show them that he wasn’t the black sheep in the family. Not the freak who needed to be protected from himself. If Sam managed to kill Lilith, he could save them all.
“Whatever.” Dean zips the first-aid-kit closed. “I need a beer,” he says and leaves the bathroom.
While Sam buttons up, he hears the fridge open and the clinking of glass. A hiss as a bottle is uncapped. Dean sighs contentedly.
“You know what?” Sam says through the open bathroom door. “I think I’ll go back and pay my old teacher a visit.”
“Why?” Bed springs squeak. Dean, as usual, is testing the mattress.
“Just because,” Sam replies. “Refresh my memories. Ask how he’s doing. Most likely, he’s not even gonna remember me.” He strolls out of the bedroom to find Dean stretched out on the bed closest to the door, beer bottle balanced on his stomach.
“Knock yourself out,” Dean says. “As long as he doesn’t inspire you to run off again and go back to college.” He says it nonchalantly, as a joke, but Sam detects a note of apprehension. It took a while (and a shapeshifter) for Sam to understand how deeply his departure to Stanford had hurt Dean.
“Don’t worry,” he tells his brother, grabbing a beer of his own from the fridge. “That part of my life is over. And we’ve got work to do.”
They do, and when, an unknown number of beers later, Dean will fall asleep, Sam will call Ruby to speed up the process.
The Damage Control Series Masterlist
Read the entire series on AO3 here.
