(If this is premature and I'm overstepping, please delete and I'll repost later.)
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Sam Winchester has stared into the abyss ... and the abyss is looking back.
Yes, the similarities between Madison and Sam went down like a rain of anvils, but it was meant to be anvils. It had to be anvils. That final bang wasn't just a gunshot, it was the last door slamming between Sam Winchester and the "normal" he once hoped to find.
And you know, it all started off so well. I mean, gosh, werewolves! Dean was completely stoked at the prospect of a good, straightforward hunt, and while Sam teased him about his eagerness, he displayed no qualms, either. They were going on the trail of one of the oldest evils humanity has ever known, savage beasts who dwell among men and prey upon the innocent. There's just one catch.
Nobody told them werewolves could be innocent, too.
Whatever werewolf contact the boys experienced when they were kids, it did not prepare them for werewolves who brought casseroles to comfort their neighbors, or who were spunky, smart, pretty girls with brainy collections of books. What somehow makes it even more wretched was how badly Sam craved that precious taste of life Madison represented. When he finally made love to her, he was a starving man plunged into a feast of hope: hungry and desperate and wanting, dear God, drowning himself in her like he might never come up for air, immersing himself in all that she had, all she could give, all he could take and keep and feed to the cold, hungry corners of his soul.
And then he could not save her.
Can you feel it, now? Something is growing just over the Winchesters' horizon, something dark and awful and building like a hurricane, like a Class 5 tornado about to rip entire towns off the map, and Sam and Dean cannot escape it. This story was about Sam, yes. But it's also about Dean realizing with brutal clarity how little power he has to change or defend against Sam's fate - whatever that fate may be. In fact, I felt Sam was actually trying to protect Dean by taking Madison's blood upon his own hands.
It seems that, after all the blows they have suffered, all the emotional roller-coasters they've been on, and after each watching the other from the corners of his eyes, fearful of what stupid, self-sacrificial, suicidal thing he might pull next ... here their nightmares have leapt howling from the shadows and they have been bludgeoned to the same cold floor. This is it. This is baseline. This is where Sam and Dean stand at last on even ground.
Now Sam truly understands the terrible promise he's demanded of Dean. Now Dean has witnessed his little brother performing a dreadful mercy that should have been only Dean's to carry out. And something in Sam surely died with Madison as it never did with Jess or Dad. This wasn't Sam being ridden by a demon or driven by a psychotic ghost. This wasn't Sam helpless to stop forces of evil from taking the people he loves. No, this time Sam looked his own fate in the eyes ... and pulled the trigger. Lovingly. Mercifully. Irretrievably. He knowingly killed an innocent girl because she carried an irreparable evil.
Just like Sam fears he does. Just like Gordon Walker insisted he did. It's an anvil to us because it's an anvil for Sam and Dean, and it's far too late to fall back on wishful thinking. Now it seems the boys have little left but a stark, staring reality from which they can no longer look away. In a grim sort of fashion, it's almost liberating. No more distractions. No more dreams. Nothing left but the fight. Nothing left but the hope that when death comes it will be delivered by the hands of love, and leave him the dignity of choice. At least Sam could give Madison that.
They are soldiers in a war that no one declared, and from which there is no retreat, no surrender. Victory or death. That's all. And the two may ultimately prove synonymous.
Oh, Sam. Oh, Dean. They've never been so naked in each others' sight as they are when this is over.
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Ed. Note: Please forgive the bleak tone of this meta. At the moment, it's just a little hard to see hope in the dark ...