Fic: Retrospective (part I of Perspectives)

[ithuriel788]

Rating: PG-13 for coarse language
Genre: Angst
Characters: Sam, Dean, John (gen)
Warnings: suicide/suicide attempt
Wordcount: 1822
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, they'd be getting therapy, lots and lots of therapy.
Circa Dead Man's Blood/Salvation.

Part I: Retrospctive

Comments

[rirren]

I love the understated way this is written, how you get this creeping sense of something being slightly off throughout the whole fic but the bomb doesn't drop until the very end.

And the characterisation of Sam is great, the way he's trying to help Dean and John prepare for him not being there through things like showing them his bookmarking methods, but he doesn't get that they wouldn't care about losing a hunting partner, they'd care about losing a member of their family. But yeah, I think you've shed light on Sam's low self esteem here really well, and also how he'd trying to minimize the harm/inconvenience from his suicide as much as possible.

I do wonder what it is that led Sam to consider suicide ... losing Jess? Depression? Being back in the hunting life? I'd really like to see another fic in this verse, maybe from Sam's POV or set after this fic, so we could see his motivations.

[ithuriel788]

Glad you like the way the bomb drops - I've got two stories out there like this, so I've got to be careful now not to go all M. Night Shyamalan about it.

I've gotten several requests for Sam's POV, so I still might try, but it's hard. I originally saw this story as a one-shot, illustrating how what might be obvious to the suicidal individual could be missed by those closest to him, and how the people who are left behind never really know why it happened. For this story, the reader is in that role, and I worry about "ruining" the story by outright revealing Sam's motivations.

[rirren]

I suppose if Sam's POV would be hard, you could do a continuation from Dean or John's POV in the hospital with them finding out what happened and a little bit about why Sam did it. Of course, this would ruin the ambiguity of the ending though.
But don't feel you have to write it. After all, you know what would work with your story better than the reader.

[ithuriel788]

Given the series title, I would kinda want to do the same scenes from Sam's POV, and end in the same place.
Now that you have gotten me thinking about it, it is entirely possible that Sam wouldn't be able to completely articulate his reasons, either.
I do imagine that if Sam survived, and the Winchesters (gasp!) talked (and listened), that Dean and John would *still* never understand why Sam would do such a thing.
Hm, I've put more thought into this than anything I did at work today.

[rirren]

I think you're totally right that Sam might not be able to articulate his reasons. I think sometimes you can't figure out exactly the cause of something like this until you've talking about it at length to someone else (a counsellor or someone).
And yeah, I do see John and Dean being unable to understand why Sam would do that, because I think that they maybe think that family should be enough, that because Sam has his father and his brother that should be reason enough to stay alive and be kind-of content.

This kind of stuff is totally fascinating to me too, so I don't blame you that you found it more interesting than work! ;P