Eight Crazy Nights: Three (part 3)

[rivkat]

lapillus: SPN, Winchester Gospels, midrash. Bonus points for working in Hanukkah. Or Bobby. 
Gen. Not quite midrash, but I hope I got the spirit of the thing.

In the first book in the series, Dean says that he hasn’t spoken to Sam in “nearly two years,” and in #3 Dead in the Water, Dean tells Sam that he spent “every day for two years with Dad, while you were going to pep rallies.” In #7 Hookman, however, Dean says, “So this is how you spent four good years of your life, huh?” while they do research in a library. Yet in #1 Supernatural, Sam has a law school interview; had four years passed, he would have already graduated. Instead, he appears to be two months into his fourth year; assuming he left his family shortly after high school graduation, that produces a period of something under three and a half years. Consistent with this calculation, the Apocrypha of Bobby Singer states that, after 2002, Sam was absent and that neither John nor Dean would tolerate a word spoken about him.

The chronology of the Gospel presents many difficulties. Some have argued that the apparent contradiction in the duration of Sam Winchester’s absence from his family can be resolved if we posit an incomplete estrangement for the first two years of his college education, followed by some final, or at least thought-to-be-final, break after which all contact between Dean and Sam ceased. (It is generally presumed that there was no further contact between Sam and his father upon Sam’s matriculation, though strictly speaking the text does not exclude the possibility of some temporary reconciliation. Indeed, R. Green takes precisely this position, arguing that John Winchester, with the great love he bore his sons, must have continued to engage with Sam, despite his initial violent rejection of Sam’s desire to worship at the altar of secular knowledge rather than remaining immersed in the true mysteries, cf. Exodus 20:5. R. Green contends that John sent Sam numerous packages, without accompanying notes; in this way, he recapitulated the gifts of G-d, whose involvement remains direct even though His ways often resist intepretation. It should be noted, however, that this is a minority position.)

One school maintains that the confusion in dates is deliberate. There are numerous portions of the Gospel in which hunts seem to be compressed past human capability, or extended beyond reason. On several occasions, Dean and/or Sam are gravely injured, yet mere days later they are said to be capable of fighting for their lives. If the old maps are to be believed, the Impala delivers them from place to place across a vast continent at speeds that must on occasion have approached a fighter plane’s. Just as tradition tells us that the oil for the Temple lasted eight days when it should have lasted only one, the Winchesters’ capabilities exceed those of the merely human, demonstrating that they are favored by G-d. (But see R. Tsoulakas, arguing that in fact the Winchesters were most hated by G-d, and that the better model for the New Gospel is Job, not Jesus and Judas.)

Others read the references to time as clues for numerological purposes. Two years, two brothers, two great angels battling at the end of days: thus is the end prefigured in the beginning. (Bet, the letter corresponding to two, is the first letter of the written Torah.)

Four years, four months in Hell; four questions and four sons for Pesach, perhaps representing the multiple roles played by Sam and Dean as they move from ignorance to wisdom, weakness to strength, defiance to obedience—and back again. (Note that Dean confronts three doubles during his journey—the shapeshifter, #6 Skin; the dream double, #54 Dream a Little Dream of Me; and #86 The End. Some would also include Dean’s out-of-body experience in #23 In My Time of Dying, because of his attempts to interact with his comatose body, but these three doubles are sentient and interact with Dean, each revealing something about Dean’s character, and thus it is generally considered that they are appropriately grouped together with Dean himself, making a total of four.)

Four is also, of course, twice two, and R. Gremsch has suggested that Dean later doubles his account of the amount of time he spent apart from Sam because the pain of separation made Dean’s perception of time stretch out. (Cf. #70 Heaven and Hell, in which Dean reveals that each of the four months that passed on earth while he was in Hell equated to ten years for him.) R. Jain, by contrast, argues that Dean’s doubling prefigures the doubling that will occur with Lucifer and Michael: two becomes four, but is in the end reduced to two again.

There are those, of course, who claim that the discrepancies are present in the Gospels precisely to provoke these sorts of debates, as G-d delights in the creativity of His own creations. In this we are following in the footsteps of the Divine. (Cf. #83 Sympathy for the Devil; #91 The Real Ghostbusters.)


****

amalthia: Chuck is kidnapped, raped/tortured and Sarah and Casey have to rescue him before he breaks and reveals any government secrets. Note: Chuck is usually my happy place, so this is weird.  Nonexplicit/aftermath.

Sarah stayed in the bunker’s bathroom while Chuck showered. He thought he heard her say something a couple of times, low and angry. That was only fair. He kept her waiting a long time.

When he was done, pruned up until his fingertips looked like contour maps, he turned the water off. The twisting motion hurt the bruises on his wrists. He wrapped himself in a couple of towels before opening the shower door.

Sarah held out a stack of clean clothes. The ones he’d been wearing had disappeared. Because that’s what Sarah and Casey did: they cleaned things up.

She left him alone to get dressed. The wrists were the worst of it that he could see, though his back felt like Lester had tried out some of his finest breakdancing moves on top of him. Which led to thoughts that he didn’t really want to revisit, so he stared at the water beading on the tiles in front of him, steam curling in patterns that were nothing like the messages encoded in the Intersect.

At last he had to go outside, where Sarah and Casey were waiting, silent except for the electric hum of all the monitoring equipment.

Chuck stood and watched, distantly fascinated, as Sarah and Casey had a sort of conversation with their eyes. A spyversation, if you would. Casey nodded and Sarah left. How did that work, Chuck wondered.

He realized that, if Casey was nice to him, he was going to lose it. Casey already thought he was a weakling—

“Everyone who touched you is dead,” Casey said, looking over Chuck’s shoulder.

It was like a spike in the stomach, and at the same time, Chuck couldn’t help but bare his teeth in what probably looked like a grin. Casey nodded. “Unless you say different, we’ve already put together the report.”

“What does it say?” He barely recognized his own voice.

“You got caught. You got roughed up a little. But we got to you in time.” Casey’s face twisted in what Chuck would have sworn was loathing. “If you want to—if you want different handlers now, I—we—it wasn’t supposed to happen.”

And, God, it was messed up, but he wanted to comfort Casey, who looked like he was about to crack and disintegrate into little pieces. “I don’t want anybody else,” Chuck said, which had the virtue of being true. “I just—don’t pretend it didn’t happen, okay? Not with me.”

Casey swallowed, then nodded, squaring his shoulders. Chuck thought about the things they might say to each other—all that training downloaded into my head and I still couldn’t stop them; sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you know, if you don’t have the big guns; will I forget?

He wasn’t ready to speak the words, or hear the responses. He might be, after a while.

“Walker’s waiting upstairs,” Casey said, still with that near-softness, like sand over bedrock.

Chuck nodded. “Take me home,” he said.

When he was ready, he knew who he wanted to be there for him.
END