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When Dad's court martial hands down the sentence—a dishonorable discharge from Starfleet, loss of rank and privileges, and ten years in a maximum security penal colony in New Zealand—Sam's holding Jessica's hand, feeling her head resting on his shoulder, but he can't stop looking down the bench at Dean.
Dean, who has Mom sitting on one side of him and his part-Vulcan boyfriend on the other. Dean, who's given an interview to the Federation News Service already, if only because they agreed to let Cassie Robinson be the reporter who handled it, and who has an appearance scheduled on one of the different current events talk shows, shooting tomorrow out in New York.
Dean, who has been the family's public face—and the face of Dad's abuse—throughout this whole ordeal. Dean, who's had Mom's public relations person coaching him on how to field the different questions and how to express himself without putting people off or damaging the case against Dad while Sam's just been told to say, "No comment." Dean, who had to deal with a full house when he finally testified about what Dad did to them.
Well, what Dad did to him, technically—but the them should have been implied in that. Sam grew up in the same house as Dean, with the same Dad, only seeing Mom when she got a chance to take shore leave and come home—but despite Mom's insistence on keeping the press away from Sam, letting Sam go about his studies uninterrupted, and trying to keep Sam from dealing with people sticking their noses into his life, the reality of the situation is that no one's really come around, asking for Sam. No one's expressed interest in his side of the story. No one wants to know how he feels about his father getting prison time, or what it was like for him to fear one of the people who was supposed to protect him.
Everyone just wants to talk to Dean. Everyone just wants to know what Dean thinks, and how Dean feels, and every last single thing about Dean.
Sam doesn't envy Dean, not in the slightest—more accurately, the way that Dean's been treated makes Sam want to punch a brick wall. His face has been plastered everywhere, both in its normal state and how he looked in the emergency room, after Dad got done with him, and he's had to deal with more nosy people than any one person should ever have to deal with. As they leave Starfleet Command's headquarters, he's the one who has to deal with a swamp of hungry reporters clamoring for him, while Sam and Jessica sneak away onto the campus unimpeded.
Then, they sneak off the campus unimpeded. They get out onto the streets of San Francisco and, as far as anyone can tell, they're just any other young couple of cadets from the Academy, arms linked and Jess leaning into Sam's side, nuzzling at his shoulder when they stop at crosswalks. They walk all the way downtown to the Roadhouse Diner and no one stops them. The only person who gawks at them is a little kid who tells his mother, Look, Mommy, look! Look how tall that boy and girl are. And Dean doesn't have that kind of luxury, not anymore. Not when the whole fucking Quadrant knows about how Rear Admiral John Winchester beat Dean half to death for daring to say that he wouldn't let their Dad push him around again.
Not when everyone's spreading the story of what happened to Dean without any appreciation for the nuances of it—already, the News Service is blowing the physical abuse out of proportion and neglecting where the real effects of Dad's abuse are, what he really did to Dean that screwed Dean up. Not when Dean's basically trapped in a prison of publicity and commotion.
"I mean, there's nothing about the situation for me to be jealous of, right?" Sam says, stirring his soda with his straw and shrugging at Jess. She seems unimpressed with this answer, furrowing his brow at him like he's not making any sense at all, and so he tries to amend that statement, "Come on, Jess—I just meant… y'know, I'm feeling fine. Why wouldn't I be feeling fine? I feel like a bad person, because maybe I'm kind of jealous of my brother, but… hey, I'm not the one who got abused."
"I think that's bullshit, Sam," she says and reaches across the table to lay her hand over top of his. "And I think you know that that's bullshit. Maybe Dean's got the more sensationalist story. Maybe he sells more for all kinds of different reasons, but that doesn't mean that your father didn't abuse you, too. They're not mutually exclusive—that's just not how it works, you know?"
Underneath Jess's palm, Sam's hand curls up into a fist. He digs his nails into his palm as he tells her, "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter, anyway—Dad's going to prison and he'll never teach at the Academy again, so justice was served for everybody." But the Look that Jess gives him suggests that maybe Sam's neglecting some aspect of this situation. Sighing, he looks her in the eye and says, "So, I'm thinking about putting in for mental health leave. Taking the rest of the semester off? Just to try and wrap my head around everything?"
Jess nods and squeezes his wrist. "I think that sounds like a great idea, Baby."