Sam Winchester and the Evolution of a “Freak”

Sam Winchester and the Evolution of a “Freak”
 
In the world of Supernatural, the word freak connotes different, dangerous, evil, and nonhuman. Hunters throw around various permutations of the word to describe the creatures they hunt (freaks), the situations they find themselves in (freaky), or negative emotional states (freaked out). Of the Winchester brothers, Dean is particularly guilty of this; he’s referred to, among others, shapeshifters, werewolves, witches, angels, vampires, dragons, and even a phoenix and kitsune as freaks. 
 
Sam, on the other hand, rarely uses the word to describe something supernatural. In fact, he most often uses the word in any form to negatively refer to himself. Following John and Dean’s lead, Sam internalized early on that freak simply meant wrong. Freaks were something to be feared and hated and hunted; they were different and did not belong. And Sam, well, he never really felt like he belonged anywhere. 

 
From a young age, Sam was sensitive about being different than his peers. As the youngest member of a family of hunters, Sam had no say in when the job would uproot them or where the next hunt would plant them for an indeterminate amount of time. Sam was the perennial new kid, barely getting the chance to get comfortable in a situation before being transplanted once more. He was acutely aware of how different his life was from his more stable classmates. Other kids didn’t spend Christmas in a motel room with a beer can Christmas wreath and gifts stolen from the house on the corner. Other fathers didn’t give their nine-year-old children .45s when they were afraid of the monsters in their closet—those children didn’t know how to use the gun either.
 
When fourteen-year-old Sam is beaten up by a bully in “After School Special,” Dean demands to know why Sam didn’t fight back. By this time, Sam’s known about the family business for nearly six years. He’s been training so could have, in Dean’s words, torn the bully apart. 
 
“Because I don’t want to be the freak for once, Dean. I want to be normal,” Sam snaps in reply, effectively shutting Dean down. 
 He would rather take the hits than prove himself any more different than he already has. Being different is terrifying for even normal teenagers, so for Sam, who is different by the nature of his supernatural-tinged life, one that he has no control over, it’s nothing short of hell. While Dean is content to embrace his differences from his peers since he’s thrilled to be following John into the family business, Sam is the opposite. Unlike Dean, who was forced to grow up far too early, Sam got a taste of a normal childhood without things that go bump in the night. That taste of normal was forcefully taken away from him that infamous Christmas in 1991. Old enough to recognize what he’d lost, Sam longed for that normalcy again and railed against anything that stood in the way—his father and the hunter’s life being the main targets of his ire. These are the things that mark him as different, as a freak.
 
Later on in “After School Special,” Sam confronts Dirk the bully once more, but it’s not until Dirk uses the taboo F-word that Sam fights back. “Come on, lose-chester. Let’s see what you got. Come on, freak! Freak!” Dirk crows. 
 
Anger twists Sam’s face at the taunt, and he shoves himself off the pavement and effortlessly takes the bully down. No matter how willing Sam is to take the hits to put up a façade of normal for his peers, all it takes is hearing the word that he fears most to set him off. Sam has learned that freaks are monsters and must be killed. And Sam, who longs for normal with every fiber of his being, reacts violently to be labeled as his worst nightmare. Ironically, he’s labeled a hero by the rest of the school for doing what no one else could in taking down Dirk. That feeling of belonging is one of Sam’s few happy teenage memories.
 
Unfortunately, Sam’s few memories of fitting in are mostly tainted in one way or another. When he and Dean return to investigate a case at Truman High years later, Sam learns about Dirk’s troubled childhood and eventual suicide, and their relation to that fight, killing any pride the memory once contained. And even when a young Sam finds a peer to commiserate with, the joy is short-lived.
 
“OK, but be honest,” fifteen-year-old Sam says to Amy in “The Girl Next Door.” “I mean, moving all the time sucks. You’re always the new kid, and everyone always thinks you’re a freak.” 

Sam’s distaste for the hunter’s life has deepened since his time at Truman; he does his best to speed through the research John and Dean need so that he can have some semblance of normal before they get back and uproot him yet again. He’s more interested in talking to the cute girl in the library than studying kitsunes. 
 
“Sam, you are a freak,” Amy tells him. Sam’s momentarily stricken, his worst nightmares playing across his face, but she quickly clarifies: “But so was, I don’t know, Jimi Hendrix and Picasso. So am I. All the coolest people are freaks.”
 
For the first time, Sam gets a positive association with the idea of being different, of being a freak. This girl that he’s got a crush on sees that he’s different and she doesn’t care. In fact, she embraces his differences. And that’s enough to make him kiss her.
 
But Amy’s words, especially once she’s revealed as a monster herself, aren’t balm enough for the wounds already festering in Sam’s childhood. Amy being a kitsune only served to strengthen the tie between freak and monster for Sam.
 
But Sam didn’t only felt like an outsider among his peers. He also never felt like he fit in with his family. John was the consummate hunter, dedicated to the hunt to avenge Mary and Dean idolized the man, following obediently in his footsteps. Sam’s distaste for their life, for how it set him apart from everyone around him in one way or another, led to feelings of alienation and anger. Sam fought with his father because John represented everything that made him different. 
 
“So what are you saying? That Dad was disappointed in you?” Dean demands in “Bugs.” The brothers have only been reunited for a short time and old wounds are slowly resurfacing. Sam is grieving for Jess and has been thrown back head-first into the life he tried so hard to get out of; it’s no surprise, then, that his bitterness starts seeping through.  
 
“Was? Is. Always has been,” Sam replies matter-of-factly. 
 
“Why would you think that?” Dean is nonplussed. He’s never been able to get into Sam’s rebellious mindset since being different has always been a good thing to him. 
 
“Because I didn’t want to bow-hunt or hustle pool. Because I wanted to go to school and live my life, which, to our whacked-out family, made me the freak,” Sam answers angrily. He wanted to play soccer and do his homework like a normal kid, but never could. Normal was never in the cards for a Winchester, and Sam held onto his fear of being different and the bitterness toward his father into adulthood.

Of course, Sam’s constant anger and fights with John only distanced him from his father, which fed into a greater circle of alienation. He just became angrier, which led to bigger fights—the culmination being the blowup when Sam left for Stanford.
 
Sam left his family, the father he constantly fought with and the brother who raised him, to find some semblance of normal. His entire life up until then had been out of his control, but at eighteen he was a legal adult and he took first chance he had to make a change. He fled a life on the road hunting things out of horror movies in favor of the traditional rite of passage for someone his age: college. 
 
Jess accuses Sam in the pilot of rarely talking about his family, but Sam had gone to Stanford to make a break from the life that isolated him from family and friends as a child. He wouldn’t and couldn’t talk about his former life. He had to cut ties with anything that threatened to destroy the new, safe life he was building where he fit in, and an unfortunate casualty of that was Dean.
 
But, in true Winchester fashion, Sam never could quite break away from what made him different, no matter how hard he tried. Before heading out with Dean in the pilot, Sam packs a wicked-looking blade that Jess undoubtedly had no idea was in their apartment. Despite not having even spoken to Dean in over two years, Sam naturally picks the life back up—like riding a bike, Dean teases. No matter how much distance Sam tried to put between him and the things that made him different, he never quite got away. 

“You know, the truth is, even at Stanford, deep down, I never really fit in,” he admits in “Skin.”
 
“Well, that’s ‘cause you’re a freak,” Dean deadpans.
 
“Yeah, thanks.” Sam, for his part, takes comment as the brotherly barb it’s meant to be despite his negative association with the word in the past. At this point, Dean isn’t aware of Sam’s nightmares that preceded Jess’ death, which Sam later reveals in “Home,” so there’s no reason for Sam to fear Dean’s judgment. He keeps that secret partly out of guilt for ignoring the dreams and partly because he fears how Dean, a hunter, will take it. But right now, Dean is blissfully ignorant and just happy to have his little brother back on the road with him.
 
“Well, I’m a freak, too. I’m right there with ya, all the way,” he says.

Once Jess dies in the exact manner as Mary, though, all Sam’s illusions of normalcy are erased. He can’t help blaming himself for her death since he left her unprotected and unaware of his secret when he’d been dreaming of her death for days before it happened. The first hint of Sam having a secret he’s unwilling—or afraid—to tell Dean comes in “Bloody Mary” when Sam is able to summon Bloody Mary because of his guilt for Jess’ death. Though Dean prods, Sam hides his premonitions until “Home,” when he has to come clean in order to convince Dean to return to Lawrence. And though Sam fears Dean’s reaction to his developing abilities, especially knowing Dean’s black and white view of world, Dean’s simply afraid for Sam, not of him. He teases Sam about these psychic abilities—brotherly banter at its finest—but doesn’t judge him.
 
Sam takes the teasing well enough in patented little brother fashion, but once he and Dean start finding other psychics like Sam, his sensitivity toward being unusual in an already unnatural situation flares up once more. Max Miller was the first psychic they came across in “Nightmare,” but it’s not until “Simon Said” that Sam really takes exception to the “freak” label once again.

“I don’t know if going in and announcing that you’re some supernatural freak with a demonic connection is the best thing, OK?” Dean says while they’re on their way to the Roadhouse for information. But those are the exact words Sam has been dreading coming out of his brother’s mouth since revealing his fledgling powers in “Home.” Dean worries about other hunters seeing Sam as something to hunt, and Sam assumes it’s not a stretch for Dean to reach the conclusion. Dean may be sticking with Sam out of filial loyalty, but little could be worse for Sam than his brother thinking of him as a monster.
 
“So I’m a freak now?” he demands, hurt.
 
Dean immediately realizes he’s said the wrong thing and fails miserably at covering himself by slapping Sam on the leg and saying, “You’ve always been a freak.” He clearly didn’t mean to hurt his brother by the statement, but the way it came out still illuminated his innate prejudice against anything supernatural, including the unnatural, possibly demonic, abilities his brother is exhibiting.
 
Later, once the brothers have started investigating the potential psychic Andy Gallagher, Sam finally voices the fear and insecurity that have been gnawing at him since the tragedy with Max Miller: “The demon said he had plans for me and children like me. Maybe this is his plan. Maybe we’re all a bunch of psychic freaks. Maybe we’re all supposed to be —” 

 
He refers to himself and his situation—which is completely out of his control once again, harkening back to the alienated childhood he fought so hard against—with venomous disgust. He’s calling himself the monster after having visions of someone with abilities similar to his own killing other, apparently innocent, people. And he beats Dean to the punch in the process; it’s easier to call himself the monster than hear the judgment from his brother’s lips.
 
But Dean isn’t judging Sam here. “What, killers?” he demands.
 
“Yeah.” That’s exactly what Sam sees the situation as. But Dean doesn’t agree. 
 
Dean might be inherently biased against the supernatural, but he’ll always be biased in favor of his little brother. He’s not going to condemn Sam, even though that’s what his brother is waiting on: “So the demon wants you out there killing with your minds, is that it? Come on, give me a break. You’re not a murderer, Sam! You don’t have it in your bones.”
And though Dean might be willing to stray into the grey areas for his brother’s sake, other hunters aren’t so accommodating. They hold the familiar black and white viewpoint of John and (previously) Dean—the same view that fed into Sam’s insecurities and kept him from revealing his visions for as long as he did.
 
In “Hunted,” Gordon Walker pops up again—only this time he’s targeting psychics rather than vampires a la their first meeting in “Bloodlust.” After failing to assassinate Sam and kidnapping Dean, Gordon defends himself to the elder Winchester:

“I’m not some reckless yahoo, OK? I did my homework. Made damn sure it was true. Look, you’ve got your Roadhouse connections, I got mine. It’s how I found Sammy in the first place.  About a month ago I found another one of these freaks here in town. He could deep-fry a person just by touching them.”

Gordon doesn’t think the psychics like Sam are pure human; he’s heard about the demon army the psychics are meant to lead and considers them traitors to humankind. They’re monsters—evil things that need to be hunted—just as Sam learned to associate with freak as a kid. 
 
And Gordon isn’t the only hunter targeting Sam for his supernatural abilities either. “Gordon told me about you, Sam. About your powers. You’re some kind of weirdo psychic freak,” Kubrik tells a bound and beaten Sam in “Bad Day at Black Rock.” The religious hunter tortures Sam and would have shot him as the Antichrist if not for Dean’s well-timed (read: lucky) intervention. Despite the humorous takedown that ensues, this instance only reinforces Sam’s insecurities for the future as Dean, it seems, is the only hunter willing to bend the definition of freak—and that’s only because Sam is his brother.
 
But despite Dean’s insistence to the contrary, Sam never feels like he can really depend on his brother to not view him differently because of his abilities. His bias against the supernatural runs down to his very core, after all. That’s why he refuses to trust Ruby, a demon, though she claims she can save Dean from his deal. Dean might be willing to step into the grey areas for Sam, but that open-mindedness stops with blood. 
 
And that disparity between the brothers after Dean makes his deal is the chink in their otherwise solid relationship that Ruby uses to divide and conquer. She needs Sam to harness his powers and takes advantage of both his desperation to save his brother from Hell and his insecurities about how Dean views him. Because, in the end, Sam’s worst nightmare is Dean seeing him as the monster he always associated with the unnatural.
 
“You don’t like being different,” Ruby tells Sam in “No Rest for the Wicked.” “You hate the way Dean looks at you sometimes. Like you’re some kind of sideshow freak. But suck it up because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we’ve gotta do it fast.”

But Dean’s refusal to let Sam delve into the freak within dooms him and he ends up in Hell. Broken by grief and survivor’s guilt, Sam eventually turns back to Ruby, who starts training him to use the powers that he had once rejected with every fiber of his being. Sam Winchester, the prophesized Boy King, is in too much pain to care that he’s becoming what he feared most. Without Dean, it doesn’t matter; he’s already living his worst nightmare. What does adding one more horror matter?

But when Dean returns, awareness of what he’s doing slams back into Sam and he immediately lies when Dean asks him in “Lazarus Rising,” “So you’ve been using your, uh, freaky ESP stuff?”
 
The fact that one of the first questions off Dean’s tongue straight out of the grave is about Sam’s freaky (read: monstrous, demonic, evil) abilities is indication enough for the younger Winchester that Dean isn’t going to listen to his side of the story, so he lies. He’s just gotten his brother back from the Pit; Sam can’t bear the thought of losing Dean again, even if only emotionally this time. The four months after Dean’s death  (on top of the recent six months only Sam remembers from “Mystery Spot”) were nightmare enough that the thought of a repeat is too much to bear.

Sam’s lying out of the fear of Dean finding out about what he’s been doing with Ruby—honing his freaky powers—leads to a major blow up between the brothers in “Metamorphosis” after Dean walks in on Sam exorcising a demon with his mind. Sam’s worst nightmare comes true the moment Dean walks into that warehouse with disappointment and anger flashing across his face.
 
“If I didn’t know you, I would want to hunt you,” Dean declares furiously. “And so would other hunters.” Sam has no defense for that. He’s actively turning himself into the type of freak John had taught them to hunt—the type that Gordon and Kubrik targeted a year earlier. 

 Though an old friend calling with a job interrupts their argument, it doesn’t simply end. In fact, the rugaru case only creates a further divide between the already distanced brothers as Sam finds himself identifying with the monster of the week in a way he hasn’t since they were looking for other psychics. 
 
“You know, nice dude, but he’s got something evil inside. Something in his blood. Maybe you can relate,” Dean accuses. And it’s true. Dean has basically called Sam a monster to his face for using the abilities forced on him by Azazel’s blood. And it hurts just as bad, if not worse, than he’d feared it would. That hurt boils to the surface in the middle of the case. Dean won’t leave it alone and Sam is done with the judgment from the person whose opinion means the most to him.
 
“You want to know why I’ve been lying to you, Dean?” Sam explodes, taking Dean off-guard. “Because of crap like this.”

“Like what?”

“The way you talk to me, the way you look at me like I’m a freak!” Dean’s seen what Sam’s powers can do and has rejected him for it. He’s drawn the line in the sand in the black and white versus grey areas debate. And so, like a wounded animal, Sam lashes out.

“I’ve got demon blood in me, Dean! This disease pumping through my veins, and I can’t ever rip it out or scrub it clean! I’m a whole new level of freak!” As far as Sam’s concerned, he’s calling a spade a spade. Dean’s already told him that he deserves to be hunted—that he’s a monster, a freak. He’s filled to the brim with self-loathing because he can’t reconcile his hunter instincts with his demon blood contamination. Who is he? And the only people the seem to care are polar opposites—Dean, the consummate hunter and king of the black and white, and Ruby, the demon who claims to remember her humanity and is teaching Sam to harness those hateful abilities. 
 
“And I’m just trying to take this—this curse and make something good out of it. Because I have to,” Sam finishes, sounding a lot like the little brother that Dean left behind for the first time since his return from Hell. Sam had to harden himself just to survive after Dean’s death and it hasn’t been easy to take down that wall back down again. Being a freak became armor for Sam during those four months because he had nothing else. But here, with Dean right in front of him, Sam is a confused and hurting kid who is trying to make the best of a crappy situation. That Dean understands. So he backs off.
 
After this fight, the brothers agree to talk to potential rugaru Jack, to try to help him understand what’s happening to him so they don’t have to kill him. Sam has to believe that Jack can fight the monster inside; if Jack can fight the blood within him, maybe he can too. And Sam gives Jack every opportunity not to take the final, unforgivable step into monsterhood—into freakdom. But when he takes out their old friend and targets Dean for his next meal, Sam has no choice but to take him out. His hopes that he might be able to fight his demonic taint are dashed.
 
Still, Sam tries to fight against himself, against his freakishness, anyway. He gives up drinking demon blood and using his powers until he realizes that Dean, who is meant to stop Lucifer from rising according to the angels, is too haunted by Hell to do it. Sam, who is already partially transformed irrevocably, takes it upon himself to stand in for his traumatized brother. Hating himself every step of the way, Sam embraces the thing that made him different, the thing he hated about himself all his life, and topples down a slippery slope of addiction.
 
But it isn’t until Sam thinks Dean has completely forsaken him that he takes the final step that unwittingly releases Lucifer. In “Lucifer Rising,” Zachariah manipulates the voicemail Dean leaves Sam to play into his worst fears and insecurities. Sam wavers over his choice to side with Ruby and kill Lilith until he hears what he believes to be Dean’s true feelings about him:
 
“Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak. Dad always said I’d either have to save you or kill you. Well, I’m giving you fair warning. I’m done trying to save you. You’re a monster, Sam—a vampire. You’re not you anymore. And there’s no going back.”

 After that condemnation, Sam is sure he has nothing left to lose. The person whose opinion matters most thinks the worst of him, so there’s no reason not to take the final step in what he assumes is going to be a suicide mission.
 
And even then, after Dean arrives at the chapel to stop him, Sam hesitates. It takes Lilith’s (the first demon and therefore one of the original freaks) further prodding at Sam’s deepest insecurity to get him to finish her—and in so doing, break the final seal to Lucifer’s cage: “You turned yourself into a freak. A monster. And now you’re not gonna bite? I’m sorry, but that is honestly adorable,” she taunts.
 
After Lucifer rises, Sam is bursting with guilt and drowning in self-hatred. He made his choice to take the kamikaze mission to kill Lilith, completing his transformation to freak in the process, only to come out the other side. He changed himself and made far too many bad choices to be alive, and yet he is. He needs space from his brother, who he still thinks considers him a bloodsucking monster. Dean can’t trust him and Sam doesn’t trust himself after his descent into the darkness within that he’d long feared and fought against, so he takes himself out of the game.

Of course, that doesn’t last. In “Free to Be You and Me,” Lucifer brings the game to Sam—heartbreakingly in the shape of Jess—to claim him as him as his vessel. “What are you doing, Sam?” the Devil asks in Jess’ gentle voice. “Running away. Haven’t we been down this road before? 

“Last time I wanted to be normal. This time I know I’m a freak,” Sam explains matter-of-factly. And there it is. He has come to self-identify as a freak. From fighting what was inside him to empathizing with the monsters they hunted to outright siding with a demon and setting Satan free, he’s run the gamut and ended up realizing he’s possibly the biggest freak on the planet. 
 
And that’s why Sam can’t be with Dean—or anyone, for that matter—anymore; that’s why he has to burn his IDs and avoid all temptation to delve back into the life. He accepts that he’s gone from hunter to something that deserves to be hunted and willingly removes himself from the equation so Dean won’t need to be the one to take him out. There are plenty of other hunters out there who will be willing to do it for him—a couple of whom appear later in this same episode.
 
Though the brothers reunite, there’s an emotional distance between them the size of the Grand Canyon they’ve never visited. Dean can’t trust Sam after the demon blood and Ruby, and Sam is left waiting for Dean to make good on his voicemail threat. And Lucifer plays deliberately into that mistrust in a ploy to get Sam to say yes when the brothers confront him in “Abandon All Hope.”
 
“I was a son, a brother—like you, a younger brother,” Lucifer tells a shaken and vulnerable Sam, whose own older brother is unconscious after being thrown into a tree when the Colt failed to kill the Devil. “And I had an older brother who I loved. Idolized, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael—Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down. All because I was different. Because I had a mind of my own. Tell me something, Sam. Any of this sound familiar?”

Lucifer deliberately draws parallels to their situations, relating his relationship with Michael to Sam’s with Dean and referencing past fights between the Winchesters. The fallen angel wants Sam to realize that he understands everything about him, that he gets him better than anyone else ever could because he has been in the same situation. They are made for each other. This only leaves Sam further shaken since he has no defense. His freakishness has transcended even his worst nightmares at this point. And it ratchets up his guilt another level since he’s simply lying in the bed he made.
 
The confrontation with Lucifer shakes Sam to his very core. In “Sam, Interrupted,” he and Dean try to take their mind off the loss of friends and their only chance at killing the Devil by taking a case at a mental institution. And when Sam starts hallucinating, his subconscious does its best to beat him down with the accusatory words and violence his heart believes it deserves to hear. 
 
His mind concocts mental patients yelling at him, and Sam can do nothing to fight back against the words he himself believes: “Now we’re all gonna die because of you. It’s all your fault,” one says. “You killed all of us. Pathetic freak,” says another. “Freak!”
 
Once Dean defeats the wraith and restores their sanities, though, Sam comes to a realization about himself. “I am angry. I’m mad at everything. I used to be mad at you and Dad then Lilith and now it’s Lucifer and I make excuses. I blame Ruby or the demon blood, but it’s not their fault. It’s not them. It’s me. It’s inside me. I’m mad all the time and I don’t know why.”

This is a turning point for Sam in the way he views himself and his situation. It takes until “Dark Side of the Moon” for him to really step up and take charge when Dean falters, but the moment outside the institution is hugely important for Sam. He realizes that his problem is not his supernatural taint; it’s not Azazel’s blood floating through his system, marking him as Lucifer’s chosen. It’s not the powers that gave him visions and he eventually harnessed to kill Lilith. 
 
No, Sam’s problem is anger.
 
And that’s a very normal, human problem.
 
And thus Sam Winchester’s true quest for redemption that culminates in him falling into Hell to seal Lucifer begins.
 
In the end, it takes nearly two hundred years of suffering in Hell for Sam to come to any peace about himself, his life, and his nature. Once Sam’s memories of Hell return, he has a lot to process. But despite the unimaginable tortures he underwent, he incredibly never lost his humanity—his innate Sammyness, exemplified by him letting adult Amy go in “The Girl Next Door.” Like on hunts past, Sam empathizes with Amy—a monster, a freak, doing her best to control the darkness within to live a normal life and protect her loved ones. He understands that and wants to give her the chance to prove herself, a chance he never felt he had since his moves were manipulated by angels and demons alike.
 
Dean, though, isn’t so understanding of the situation. “Look, man, I get it, OK?” he says. “You meet a girl, you feel that spark—there’s nothing better. But this freak?”
 
Wallowing in his own hurts, Dean isn’t thinking when he speaks. But when Sam grabs his jacket and gets up to leave, Dean realizes the old wound he’s reopened and tries to backtrack—a familiar dance over the years from when he’d stick his foot in his mouth about this sensitive subject.
 
“I didn’t mean—” 
 
Sam, though, is not having any of it. “Yeah, you did.” His brother’s prejudice against the supernatural is simply too deeply ingrained, and his history of trusting the supernatural in the past is filled with situations blowing up in his face. Sam gets it, but after everything he’s endured to atone for his wrongdoings, it still hurts to think that his brother sees him like that. 
 

“Look,” Sam adds, “I see the way you look at me, Dean—like I’m a grenade and you’re waiting for me to go off.” He ignores Dean’s weak interruption, needing to get this off his chest. He knows he’s been acting crazed with seizures, hallucinations of Lucifer, and sneaking off in the night, but through it all, he’s come to some semblance of peace now that he can tell the difference between what’s real and what’s in his head. 
 
“I’m not going off. Look, I might be a freak, but that’s not the same as dangerous.” Even though freak in the Winchester canon has always equated to monster, and therefore dangerous, Sam is doing his best to align himself with his childhood friend—the first person to ever give him the positive association with being a freak. He willingly aligns himself with the monster of the week; he’s not just empathizing, as he did in the past, but drawing a direct line between them in the hope of getting his brother to understand.
 
“I didn’t say—” Dean vainly tries to interject again, but Sam cuts him off once more.
 
“It’s OK. Say it.” Sam invites Dean to call him a freak, a monster, something to be hunted—an action that led to some of the biggest fights between them in years past. But this is a Sam with a new perspective. Nearly two centuries in Hell, apparently, will do that to a person. “I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be normal, but come on. I’m not normal. Look at all the crap I’ve done, look at me now. I’m a grade-A freak. But I’m managing it. And so is Amy.” As much as it hurts him to think that Dean will never see him as anything but tainted, he accepts it and makes one more appeal to Dean to leave Amy alone—one more appeal for trust.
 
There’s something beautiful, yet tragic, about Sam’s state of mind at this point. Sam has finally stopped fighting the cards he was dealt and wallowing in what is completely out of his control. For so long he channeled his fear and insecurity about the F-word into anger, which only alienated him from those around him. The angry Sam of old is no more. There’s a sense of calm about him that is stunning in the wake of what he’s endured. Yet, tragically, he continues to think Dean sees him as a freak and has accepted that as the status quo. 
 
The voicemail, after all, has never been resolved.