Wow, all your kind reviews for the first 2 chapters were just so humbling. They really made me feel so much more positive about getting this chapter out. Big thanks to all those who helped me push this along – I wouldn't have done any of this without their kind words of support.

So I'm not feeling as green-as-cabbage looking as I did when first starting this piece, but, and it is a big BUT, I still feel I have to warn you all that this is my first stab at doing a multi-chaptered story so please forgive any glaring errors or embarrassing faux pas.

The effects of gravity – Chapter 3: 'It's just not fair'

John Winchester was made numb, blindly running away from the grief, as the air screamed with the ear-shattering sounds of splintering wood and shattering stone, taunting him as they fell that he had failed.

Mary's baby, her last legacy tattooed into the muscle of his heart, his Sammy, was gone. What was left of this muscle contracted in his chest, stuttered to freeze over and shatter into a thousand bitter shards at the next heartbeat, to leave a void colder than death its self.

He was left teetering on the edge of the sanity, willing to give himself up to the folly of madness rather than face such a desperate pain again. Only for Dean did his legs work hard to get hem to safety, only for his oldest boy could he continue. The loss was consuming him from within, because it was beyond heartache, it was beyond heartbreak, beyond reason.

Yet all the reasoning in the world would not stop the guilt of what he had done disappear. He had dare left behind the one pure thing still left in his fractured existence behind to die. Sam.

/------------------------------------------/

Outside far enough away from the collapsing mansion to keep Dean safe he dropped his oldest son gently to the ground. The soft green grass was a yielding blanket to cushion his too still form. But at seeing the soft even rise and fall of his chest he knew that at least one son was alive.

At seeing his oldest rest so easily John Winchester sunk down onto his knees, his head tucked down to his chest, and his eyes shut tight unwilling to see the devastation in front of him. The air was now sweet, cold and fresh, but he did not want to breathe it in, his chest willingly was twisted in an unbelievable tight vice of agony crushing his lungs.

All of his years of hunting had come to this great failure, and his eyes glistening with unshed tears, still unwilling to spill them because to do so would acknowledge his mistakes, and the truth that went with it.

As he rocked on his haunches in the dirt, fingering the soil pitifully, he was a man as if broken, left dreaming of the impossible. Dreaming that if he wished for it long enough he would be able to reach down and pull his boy from the hold of the cold ground by sheer force of will alone.

As if somehow he might be able to still pull his Sammy up from the clotted knotted ground of dark roots and decay, away from the darkness that his youngest had always feared.

The too fresh memory of his last moments with his boy, though only a second long, stabbed at his mind, reminding him that when he had dared look down into his youngest eyes he had seen a rare moment of trust. The house was destroying itself and still his youngest did not expect him to fail, his gaze confident, expectant, waiting patiently for him to do the impossible and get him also to safety.

Then that look of hope was exorcised as they shared a moment of understanding, his too bright eyes bearing the same look he had witnessed on Mary's face so many years ago.

Mary frightened gaze had understood that he could not save her, pinned impossibly to the ceiling readying to burst into flames. She knew she was about to die. And now that same recognition was reflected in Sam's piercing gaze, acknowledging that his father had to leave him. Leave him to save Dean.

For John the sight froze his heart, chilled his blood, and words refused to leave his constricting throat so he had done the only thing left to him. He tore his face away from the damning stare of his youngest son, and ran.

Now in the safe zone of the outside world, with the cold harsh sunlight of the day blinding his vision, his body defied his wishes and drew in fresh lungs full of air, forcing him to breathe, ignoring the pain of his memories as they merged into one.

Like a gnat buzzing around his head a voice kept whispering the words. "Gone, both gone" and he knew he failed those he loved the most, and all his promises to Mary to keep her children safe were now broken.

Reality now held him tight, the longed for madness slipped sideways and all he wanted to do was to scream, to give voice to the pain tearing him apart. Finally the grief he had internalised exploded outwards, becoming audible as he started to sob a heavy keening wail of utter defeat.

Time passed unaccounted and his breaking sobs turned into smaller hitches, hiccupping painfully in his chest, and bleary eyed he dared pick up his head from his chest and searched out the ruins that had emerged from the settling dust cloud. It offered him no hope as only a shell of a building remained.

The main frontage of this once magnificent building had fallen backwards, its innards crushing everything underneath it and denying any access to the floor below. There was no way his son could have survived this. No way at all.

/---------------------------------------/

It should have been an ending of sorts but this didn't feel quite like what he had expected. Only the pressing weight of something across his chest offered up the explanation that he was still in the house and not yet ready to have that meeting at the Pearly Gates.

So, not dead then Sam, he thought to himself dryly. Not yet anyway he thought as his body rebelled with enough aches and pains to make him groan out loud. Thankfully the once sharp hammering in his head had dulled to a softer throbbing, making his thoughts less jumbled.

Memories resurfaced, falling neatly back into place. He remembered Penny, kissing him so demandingly the night before that he thought at some point if he didn't draw breath he would surely suffocate. And god what her fingers could do had to be illegal in some states he thought. It was a good memory and a ghost of smile crossed his face.

Time shunted forwards and he remembered the hunt going badly, falling, smacking his head, hurting. Dean had been teasing him about having landed on his butt, but his wide green eyes promised that everything would be okay and the hurt would disappear. And Dean was never wrong. Right?

But then he recalled his father's gaze before all hell broke loose and his throat closed tight in the memory. He didn't want to remember that anymore. So tiredly he drifted back off to other fonder memories.

It was the smell that woke him next. The earthy wet smell of something dank and rotten that seeped in all around him. Slowly he opened his heavy lids and was rewarded with a blanketing darkness, and he fought down the feeling of panic coursing through him at the being so blind.

A shift of his body unconsciously in waking, an arm, a leg, or maybe just the act of breathing and the weight on top of him pressed deeper, stabbing harder against flesh and he was instantly alert to the pain.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck", he hissed to himself, and drew in a deep tight breath as he tried to understand where the pain was coming from but for some strange reason he was unable to pin it down. All he knew that it was a constant active presence, and he just wished rid of it.

Stilling his need to move, the stabbing sensation lessened and once again with the relief his thoughts drifted off again. Sleep would be most welcome he decided.

/--------------------------------/

When he woke next it was cold all around him, deliciously cold. It fingered his throbbing head with a light soothing touch, allowing him to drift softly without the urgency of real life to nag at him. He had no sense of time and he could have been out for a minute or an hour. He didn't really care. This empty feeling felt almost blissful.

Then a kaleidoscope of flickering images jumped in full colour into his head and he remembered the sequence of events that had led him to being buried underground. Dancing before his eyes he recalled the imagery of the house breaking into a million pieces and Dean slung over his father's shoulder, which meant that he had been hurt.

"Oh God," he cried out to the darkness. "Dean." The fear of losing his brother sent adrenal pumping through his veins and his pinned body twitched and stirred and with new movement agony resurfaced to stab at him again, dragging him fully awake and alert.

Pain can do that to you – snatch you up away from the blissful state of dreams to the tedious reality of battered limbs and cuts forcing a hissing sound from pursed lips as it tears you awake.

Sam tried to ride with the wave of discomfort that rippled across his body, but the whimper in his throat couldn't be denied as his left shoulder seemed on fire and his chest felt heavy, with a crushing weight seeming to be sitting on top of him.

Just breathing was painful, not helped as his heart beat too rapidly at the thought of Dean being hurt.

Every part of him seemed to be throbbing but it was a secondary consideration as all he could think about was that he had to find his brother, and that meant that he needed to be free. Now.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that Sam Winchester wasn't a stubborn son of a bitch when needed. By all accounts he should be playing dead. After all just like the seriously screwed 'Witch of the East' a house had fallen on him and his body had taken more than its fair share of battering.

Yes, he acknowledged with a wry smile, he should be minus his ruby slippers just about now, but he was not ready to be written out of the story. Not yet. Not till he knew his brother was okay.

Gritting his teeth against the shooting pains in his shoulder and body he managed to lift his right hand out from under the loose rubble, and shakily raised it up to the bridge of his collarbone and chest. A heavy weight seemed to have settled itself over his ribcage and as he felt around it gave a little, shifted slightly to the right of him with the movement.

For a moment his paused, trying desperately to drag more air into his constricted lungs, then using his right hand and forearm as a fulcrum he started to lever upwards against the mass pushing with all the strength that he had left, till the slab of plaster and wood toppled away from him with a soft whoosh.

The relief was instantaneous. His bruised ribcage rapidly expanded as his lungs drank in deeply and greedily cool refreshing air.

For a few seconds he just lay there, letting the oxygen in his blood replenish itself and the strength to his limbs return. Then slowly he started to measure the damage to his body, wiggling his toes and ankles first and blew out a shaky thanks that at least his legs still seemed to be in working order.

Another thumbs up he told himself, because now he might just be able to walk away from this one - given half a chance that is.

From the burning sensation in his chest he guessed that he must have cracked a few ribs, and gently his right hand ran across them assessing the sore spots but there seemed to be no breakages. Still doable he told himself. A few cracked ribs shouldn't stop him from getting his butt off the ground and standing again he told himself.

The stabbing pain in left shoulder demanded his attention next and his right hand searched around blindly for the cause. It was soon found, a large chunk of something metal had decided to nail itself through his flesh, the widest part jutting out of his shoulder by a good few inches. When he pulled at it gently the pain screamed through him like fire.

"Shit" he thought feeling the slick slide of blood on his fingers, "that fucking hurt," and he decided that for the moment it was just best to leave it were it was.

Seriously unnerved by being totally in the dark he sought to remedy the situation and shakily his right hand searched out to his left side and relief flooded through him when it felt the straps of his backpack.

Quickly, ignoring the spasms in his body, he snagged the sack up onto his chest, and searched within for the rubberised touch of his torch. A smile of relief washed over his tired face when he was able to pull it out, praying silently that it had not been damaged in the fall as he thumbed the on switch. He was rewarded with a bright circle of light hitting the ceiling above him.

"Well I'll be damned," he sighed to himself "At least something has gone right today."

Curiously he swung the torch around in a low arc and swallowed back a moment of fear at the sight it revealed. The cellar had been peppered with blocks of stone, wooden beams and metal girders from above skewering the walls and floor. It looked a like a giant game of pickup sticks gone wrong he thought idly.

He blew out a shaky gasp of relief, marvelling at how he had not been made into shish kebab, and then gave a small involuntary nervous giggle at the thought. Yeah, shish kebab Sam - now that would not have been fun he told himself, before wincing as the fire in his shoulder reminded him that he had not got off entirely Scot-free.

'Time to get your butt up Sam', he told himself deciding there and then that he would find a way out of this hell. It was time to find his brother.

Ignoring the scream of battered ribs and muscles he drew himself shakily up on to his knees. He needed a few moments to find a steady breath and batter down the feeling of vertigo that had swept over him. The enemy within fought a battle for control as fresh hurts revealed themselves but Sam had faced pain before on many different levels and wasn't about to let it take control of the game.

His faced beaded with a grey coating of perspiration as he fought to stay upright and after a few moments his body steadied itself and he allowed himself a tight grin of satisfaction that he had not fallen back down. If he fell down he honestly didn't think he would be able to get up again.

His hopes rising that escape was still an option he swept the beam of the torch around his prison looking for some way out. He carefully unbuckled his watch from his useless left arm and gave a small grunt of surprise at seeing that it was still only mid afternoon.

This new knowledge only made him feel worse as any welcoming shafts of sunlight seeping from any cracks from above were missing. The world from above had buried him alive in this hell-hole.

With no visible escape routes at hand anger started to replace the fear that had burned first inside. What might have been normal teenage irritation amplified itself expedientially till all he wanted to punch something good and hard. And he would have done, but bodily hurts kept him firmly on his knees while tears of frustration stung his eyes.

Irritably he batted the errant tears away, not willing to allow this show of weakness to diminish any of his anger. Aware of how childish he might sound he just wanted to scream this was just no fair. Not bloody fair at all. e

A voice kept whispering maliciously in his ear that none of this would have happened if his all-knowing father had listened to him just this once. If dad had paid any attention to his warning he wouldn't be stuck in this damned prison alone, hurt, battered and concussed. He'd still be able to have that date with Penny and Dean wouldn't have been hurt.

God, he groaned out loud, what a completely fucked up day this was. And hell yes this day was officially now in his top 5 list of 'Why I hate being a Winchester'. Or more precisely why he really hated being John Winchester's son.

The need to confront all the slights and hurts visited on him by his father was growing within him, the anger channelling itself with a purpose, giving him extra fire in his bones, extra determination to find a way out of this nightmare. Now dark questions started to worry away at him, eating away like acid in his mind.

Where the hell was his dad now? Were he and Dean still alive? God no, denied Sam, that was not a possibility he would entertain. His brother just had to be safe. And yes his dad had to be alive to, so that he could finally tell him face-to-face what a major screw up of father he was.

After all why did his make him come on this stupid hunt in the first place despite all his protestations? Was he doing it just out of spite to drag him away from his revising so that he could fail his exams next week?

Did that man honestly think that going up against poltergeists and demons on daily basis was a good thing for his sons? Or that his studies were a waste of time leading him nowhere?

Did he really expect him to be happy living this life of demon and ghost hunting, when clearly, as his dad kept telling him, what a major failure and disappointment he was at not being able to follow his orders, his commands, the way Dean did.

Even when he dared to open his mouth and ask a simple 'Why' instead of the prerequisite "Yes Sir and I'll shut the fuck up" he knew that his father would never answer him directly. It just wasn't worth his time explaining it to him when he had already told everything he needed to say to Dean, right?

Or maybe today his dad had just wanted to prove a lesson to him again, that he was just not good enough to join the exclusive 'Pat-on-the-back-you-did-good' hunting club that he and his circles of buddies made up.

Caleb, Pastor Jim, Bobby, and more importantly Dean, they all passed muster and had an open door to this little club. Just not Sam 'second rate' Winchester.

The tears that he had so desperately to keep back started to tumble. This pain was too deep to ignore, more damaging than the physical cuts and bruised he was wearing, an encompassing hurt knowing that his father could never love him the way he loved his brother.

The one memory he didn't want to acknowledge kept battering away at his defences. His father's acknowledging look as he left him behind could no longer be banished from his sight.

He knew why his dad cut and run. Saving number one son had to come first, why go for second choice when you already had the best in your grip. And the best as always to John Winchester was what counted. Dean counted more and it was as simple as that.

Then the anger that boiling away inside cooled to bubble slowly in his veins, to throb in his skull, as he thought about his brother. None of this was fair, not to him and most certainly not to Dean, and deep down he could hot really hate his father for saving the best part of their little screwed up family.

Dean was their centre, the gravitational force that kept them from spiralling away from each other. He anchored them together, and without him there would be nothing.

No, he realised dejectedly, his Dad had made the right choice. It made perfect sense for him to save that closest to him, the strongest link that chained them all together.

It was logical. It was honest. But it still damn well hurt.

/-------------------------------------------------/

A shuddering breath brought Dean awake, and confused eyes searched out his surroundings his eyes watering at the sharp bright sunlight he found himself bathed in. Squinting he was confused to see his father sitting slumped with his back to him on the ground, his eyes staring into the distance, fingers idly playing in the dirt.

"Dad" he called out, trying to raise himself to a sitting position, ignoring the 'thunk-thunk' throb at the back of his head, green eyes widening in alarm. "Where the hell is Sammy?

John looked slowly over to him, his eyes dark and hollow, and lifting a shaky finger pointed to the ruins in front of them, and Dean screamed for his brother.

/--------------------------------------------------/

Tentatively drawing himself to standing position Sam rubbed furiously away his tears. He was done with the self-pity, and was smart enough to that this destructive inner pain had to be put to one side as it wasn't going to help him get out of this mess.

He lurched forward and found himself clinging onto a skewered beam of wood for support as his head decided to remind him that he had attempted to split his skull open on his first major whumping of the day.

His right hand found the wound on his hairline, and came away relatively clean. The blood had thankfully dried to a thickening scab but the effects of the concussion were making itself known once more as his stomach finally rebelled and he upchucked all over the floor. Grimacing at the final heave, Sam tried to straighten again, wiping a dirty cuff across his wet mouth.

He wasn't sure at first whether it was because his eyes were so watery from vomiting so hard or if he was just going plain crazy but something distinct moved to the side of him.

Swinging his torch round the light splayed across the far wall and again he caught the movement of something not yet solid enough to bend the light to give it true form.

Eyes widening in disbelief he watched it flicker to move in tight jerky movements, like a puppet on a string, a distorted pantomime image weaving itself between and through the encircling beams of wood and metal.

Sam sucked back a small moan of fear having faced enough unnatural entities in is too short life to not realise that he now had his own personal Casper, more than likely wanting to play patty-cake with his head, coming towards him.

"Oh Shit," he whispered out loud and found himself asking if this freaking day could get any worse? He choked but a laugh, his hysteria wanting to break free, and decided there and then that this day was going straight to the top of his most hated list.

T.B.C……..

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Sorry for ladling on the angst. It just took over with a mind of its own and made itself write itself across the page. Also I know there was not a lot of Dean in this one, but I just felt that the focus needed to be on John & Sam! Next chapter expect a desperate and angry Dean, a shattered John and a seriously freaked out Sammy!

Roz.

Ps. Faye, Carocali & Gemini is this limpSam enough for you yet?