hiiiii i came across THIS wonderful post again: https://www.tumblr.com/flowersintheimpala69/757661016232460288/s1-dean-meeting-later-seasons-sam-through-time and was curious if you had any thoughts with es/ls verse and apologies!!!
i feel like through the seasons, dean clams up and can’t apologize anymore even when he clearly means it (“i’m poison,” etc). he does insane things to show it rather than say it. it’s like he thinks that if he doesn’t have that bit of pride — if he admits that he was wrong — the whole stack of cards is gonna fall.
meanwhile sam is soooo much more apologetic and taking the blame for things that aren’t his fault (whereas young sam is the opposite — he’s the tower of pride there, who’s not gonna ever admit that maybe dad was more complicated than thought).
just curious if you were thinking anything ☺️
the wonderful post in question!
you hit the nail exactly on the head!!! dean holds a lot of guilt and blame in the early seasons (e.g., john's death, sam's death, jess's death, forcing sam away from stanford, jo's death, etc.), and as we get later into the seasons, dean never makes apologies or can be wrong. he still definitely has that guilt, but it mostly manifests as anger.
on the other hand, sam in the early seasons is never at fault, while in the later seasons, sam takes the blame for everything. he sees most things in their lives as his fault, and verbalizes blame as an apology.
they kind of go on opposite arcs, which is kind of fun!
i think they ABSOLUTELY notice this discrepancy very soon.
as a small-scale example, ES!Sam runs headfirst into LS!Sam one day in the hallway, and the stack of books ES!Sam's carrying goes flying. immediately, he's like "hey! watch where you're going!" even though he's absolutely the one that clipped the corner. LS!Sam is like "woah hey i'm so sorry i guess i'm in my head today"
ES!Sam definitely sees this as a supporting evidence for the lack of a backbone from sam. he can't even tell ES!Sam to fuck off about running right into him, and just takes whatever shit anybody throws at him. this probably drives him even crazier, because this is a further alienation--so much of LS!Sam he doesn't even recognize!!!
(cue ES!Dean/LS!Sam being stuck in an apology loop and ES!Sam/LS!Dean just staring at each other waiting for them to say something ("don't know how to use those long legs of yours yet, kid?" "shut up, it's your fault you're basically a tank"))
when they're all together, i think ES!Sam would irritate LS!Sam the most. LS!Sam would see ES!Sam as kind of an arrogant little shit, lol, especially since it's canon sam tends to be harsh with the younger versions of himself. it would make him sad, which would make him angry. who are you to know what's best? you don't know anything. you've never known anything.
i also think LS!Dean would irritate ES!Dean, because a dictator that can never be wrong?? very much john winchester, yup. when LS!Dean says something mean to anyone, and hits them with, like you said, an "i'm poison" move, ES!Dean would be like ?? wtf ?? what does that even mean ?? like okay emo, how about you apologize first ??
this was SUPER fun to think about, thank you so much for sending it in!! :) mwah mwah mwah! <3
