#I think spending so much time with angels in the cage would warp Sam’s ability to perceive himself as Not a possessing force

[quietwingsinthesky]

Okay, see this raises an interesting question. I think I’m going to go with ‘yes, soulless!Sam could be possessed’ because there’s nothing in the show that tells us he couldn’t. He is a vessel, theoretically, soul or not, the blood and bone of him should be able to contain an angel. I think the soul thing is actually a whole different issue. Not ‘can Sam be possessed without a soul’, but ‘how does possession work sans soul?’ And I’m of two minds about this.

First, I’m going to work with the closest equivalent we’ve got, which is that Sam’s soul does kind of possess his own body? Given what we know of demons and ghosts (both previously human, both divorced from their original bodies, both able to possess other humans,) this isn’t that out there of an assumption to make, I think. And second, given that, why did soulless!sam’s very vocal denial of consent not matter towards that possession, and what does that tell us about how an angel approaching him would work?

So, option one: Sam’s soul doesn’t require his body’s consent to re-enter it because human souls just don’t work on angel grace rules. Angels need consent. Demons and ghosts do not, and so I think it would be reasonable to assume that their common ancestor, the regular old human soul, doesn’t have to follow those rules either. Now, if true, theoretically, this would mean you could juggle whatever souls through whatever bodies you want like it’s the scene from the live action scooby-doo film, which could certainly be used for Hijinks.

(Wait. Wait, hold on. Okay, this holds up, actually. Granted, it’s a case involving a spell, but Swap Meat, yeah? The episode where a random teenager gets into Sam’s body? Human soul traded for human soul across bodies, and neither needed the body’s consent to get inside. Also, while Gary is in Sam’s body, his consent could technically allow Lucifer in as well, hinted at by the demon in the episode, so that’s something to think about. Whether Lucifer would be happy it’s not Sam letting him in, that’s a whole other discussion, but it could happen and that’s what matters here. The body and soul don’t technically need to match up for the consent to matter, the invasive soul’s consent overrides the body’s and that of the original soul’s.)

Option two: Human soul do need consent to possess people, but soulless!sam doesn’t count as people. He doesn’t count as someone who can consent. He doesn’t even count as someone who can’t consent. I mean, obviously to us, we can tell that soulless!sam is pretty clearly an individual with some level of autonomy outside of the presence of Sam’s soul, and that he very loudly protested being forced to take his soul back, and that he continued to exist as a separate entity behind Sam’s wall until Sam reabsorbed him. So like. Soulless!Sam was a being whose consent was violated in this instance. To us.

What I’m getting at here is that, in the universe of the show, it wasn’t. Because soulless!sam, as a body, as a vessel, does not have the ability to consent or not consent. It’s a non-issue. He is empty, and that’s all that matters.

So, depending on which of these we go with, that leaves us with either:

option one, an angel would require soulless!sam’s consent to enter his body, but as usual, no human soul/ghost/demon would. So he works just like everyone else in the universe.

option two: an angel would not require soulless!sam’s consent to possess him because he’s free real estate, babyyy. he’s an empty house. he might be a person but that doesn’t mean the universe is going to treat him like one. If Lucifer strolled up to him, he wouldn’t even have to ask, he’d just jump his bones then and there and have himself a nice tall person-suit.

Which, in a way, means Sam’s right. His body is just a vessel. It doesn’t even get to choose who enters or leaves it, not like Sam might get to throw other beings out once he’s inside.

Does Sam think of it as his body or does he, in the (occasional) privacy of his own head, refer to it as his vessel?