Hi guys! Thanks for sticking with me through this story. I was planning on finishing it up by the Season 9 finale, but unfortunately couldn't pull it off. I hope you all still enjoy this story as it comes to a close! You have been amazing.

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I'm not even going to start going into all the reasons that I have an, um, issue, with clowns. It's a really long list, and trust me, you don't want to hear most of it.

I think the fear developed with this one particular event that occurred when I was three or four years old. It's something that I know I will never talk about.

Dean was mortified when he found out what had happened. Purely mortified. I think over the years part of him forgot about it, just to have one less thing to feel guilty about.

Once, when I came screaming to "Bean" in the middle of the night, nightmares of the ghoulish, brightly painted faces bombarding my mind, he'd pulled me up next to him on his bed. After he'd finished tucking his big green quilt around me, he got me as close to him as he possibly could and began talking softly, his voice gentle and reassuring.

"Sammy," he'd said, "remember the comic books? The Batman ones?"

I had remembered, of course.

"And you know how Batman fights the Joker and wins? And the Joker is a clown, too?"

I'd swallowed and nodded.

"Sammy, I'm going to tell you a secret." Dean had said.

I had leaned in hungerly as he cupped his hands over his mouth.

"I'm Batman." he'd whispered.

"No you're not, Bean."

"Oh yes I am! If you don't believe it, look!"

He reached under his bed and pulled out a black, molded plastic mask.

"Batman's mask!" I shouted.

"Shh...don't want to wake up dad." he cautioned, glancing over his shoulder at the impending doom of the darkened hall, just beyond the open door.

I lowered my voice. "Dean, where did you get that?"

He grinned. "I told you. I'm Batman."

Not that Dean hadn't been my hero from the very beginning, but in that particular moment, he ascended to a new level of perfection in my eyes.

Thirty years later, the man at my side is a far cry from the Batman figure of my fantastical childhood imagination.

When Dean's lost a lot of blood, he morphs into a kind of cross between a toddler who's just gaining full control of his motor skills and a wasted teen. There's a similarity in the movements, I guess. So as we sink onto my bed in the bunker, I'm not really sure who's holding up who.

My hero is no longer my hero, but I know that it goes both ways. I've fallen in his eyes, too.

I hit a dog. I didn't look for my brother in his hour of greatest need, because I met a girl. She and I hooked up in a motel room for a year, and I had cake and barbeques and beers and lived the sweet life with my woman and my dog. That's the story he would tell, anyway.

As I watch Dean trying to get his hands to stop shaking enough to stitch me up, I realize that his opinion of my actions during his Purgatory trip is justified, simply because I never made the effort to give him a better explanation.

If I had given Dean a full explanation, it would have broken down the meager walls of sanity that I'd erected during his time in Purgatory. Beyond that, though, I don't believe he deserves a better explanation.

Dean and I have hurt each other a lot over the years. We could both drone on and on about it. The lies, the deception, the misunderstandings and even betrayals. To do so would break the age-old Dean Winchester commandment: no chickflick moments. So instead, we suck it up, stow our feelings, and do our freaking jobs. It's better that way. And no matter what we've done to each other, we've always pulled through.

I stare at him, hunched over on my bed as he focuses all of his earnest attention on patching me up, like somehow sewing up the jagged cuts in my arms will mend our relationship, too.

The cold, biting alcohol wipe slides across the damaged skin on my arms. It's a feeling. Even if I'm tough, I'm not going to lie and say that it's a pleasant feeling, or that I welcome it. I've never had acid poured onto my skin, but the alcohol in an open wound is agonizing enough to make me wonder if there's any similarity between the two sensations.

The physical pain is all it takes for me to remember why the rules about non-physical feelings are there in the first place.

I've never had a mountain to climb like this before. I don't know if this is something that I can get over.

What Dean and I do. It's called a defense mechanism. It sounds like a such a clean, in-the-box, textbook-on-the-shelf term.

If you search Wikipedia for "defense mechanism", it will get into a lengthy description and a history of Sigmund Freud before telling you that "Defense mechanisms may result in healthy or unhealthy consequences depending on the circumstances and frequency the mechanism is used."

Understatement.

I have all these theories about Dean and I's communication habits and our emotional stability. Similar to our strength, I believe that our defense mechanisms have begun to backfire.

But then, when I start thinking about those theories, irony of all ironies...my defense mechanisms kick in, and I laugh it off. Or I think about something else. I have to leave it behind.

No chickflick moments.

Because we know how easily, how fast, we could end up like Martin, an older hunter friend of ours who's since...bit it.

Or, I guess he was bitten.

Martin lost his sanity towards the end of his hunting career. Completely lost it. Couldn't handle reality anymore. We visited him once and found him jumping at shadows, so hopelessly lost in the pain and loss of his life that he could barely acknowledge the passing of time.

I'm jolted out of my reverie by a sudden stabbing sensation. I shout in surprise, and Dean hisses apologetically, putting down the needle for a moment and shaking his hands out, trying to get them to obey his commands.

The pure white coat of bandages resembles the flag of Japan, featuring a blatantly red circle at the center. He's struggling a little for air as well, a side effect of the blood loss.

"Dean." I say gently. "I've got this. Why don't you go get some rest?"

"Sam…"

"I can do it. I mean, you just stabbed me, so I can probably do it better than you can at this point."

He opens his mouth to argue, then changes his mind, rubbing the back of his hand wearily over his eyes.

"Thanks." he says roughly.

He moans and sways as he gets to his feet, and my heart does a little flip. He's got me worried.

I reach out my hand to steady him, but he avoids my touch and disappears back down the hall towards his own room.

Chickflick moment rule aside, there's something boiling in me that I have to get out. Poisoning me like the Mark was poisoning Dean. I lean across the bed and grab a few sheets of paper and a pen.

I don't think we're really better than anyone else. Sometimes, I don't think we're braver, or stronger. Dean is convinced that we're some sort of rogue X-men. I disagree. I think we just have better defense mechanisms than the average human.

But if we let everything in, let everything hit us…

I think we'd be even worse off than Martin was towards the end.

After I finish mending my arms and writing on the paper, I get to my feet, the wicker chair in my room creaking wearily as it is freed of my weight.

I have to admit, there are times when I myself am surprised by the altitude I reach when I'm standing. I seem to have a tendency to become keenly more aware of my own height when I have a head injury. Maybe something to do with dizziness.

I don't know.

My feet find a crooked path across my bedroom, each step jerky and unconfident. I toss the alcohol wipes, the bloody bandages, and the five page letter I wrote to Dean into the trash can.