Annnnnnnnd the plot thickens. A lot. :)

Thank you so much for all of the kind words. Note to self: MYSTERIES ARE HARD! Luckily, there's a little voice named Agelade (check her out! Her SPN pwns) whose enthusiasm for this story has kept it going.

Summary: Sammy wants to help, and gifts are exchanged.

Flash forward: a dream about Dad picks at the scab of memory for both brothers.

Chapter 5: "My Friend of Misery"

May 1, 1993

Sam: 9-years-old

Dean: 14-years-old

Sam sat in the lunchroom heavily. He yawned, and when he did his eyelids drooped which necessitated a hasty head shake to wake up. This was the cafeteria, a public place, and Dean's commands to watch his back were running on autopilot. Unfortunately, the combination of sleep deprivation and anticipation were doing a fair job of unraveling whatever reality Sam had left in the world, not that it was much.

"Monsters exist, Sammy, and when they come out, Dad kills 'em. If you ever see something like a tooth fairy, you run like hell. Yell for me. Got it?"

The truth was overrated. The truth sucked. What their father did for-let's be honest-a hobby had taken control of his life and it was turning Dean into something scary, especially now that his brother was getting stronger and faster. In a couple years when he had grown-up muscles for real, he'd ditch Sam to go do those things too. Eventually they'd have to leave Osseo, so what was the point of befriending people?

But...but Amber was different. They had a connection, he knew it. Even if they left this town, it wasn't like he'd never see her again. And if he could help her a little, wasn't that just as important as what his father did? It didn't cost anything to reach out. It wouldn't affect Dean or anyone else, but maybe this was where he could start to make a difference too.

Blearily, Sam focused every ounce of attention he could muster onto the doors and looked for her. The longer he waited, the more surreal everything became. His senses first muddled and then went to triple overload-children's voices sounded like screams from Bedlam, trays and metal forks clanked and smacked, the lights in the cafeteria became bright, almost hot, and then dimmed to nothingness...

Silence.

Sam...Sam...Sam...

It's better if you don't, Sam. You can't save me.

Amber? He takes her hand. He smiles gently. It's okay.

Strangers die everyday, Sam.

That's not a very 3rd-grader thing to say. Are you feeling okay?

I'm scared. I'm all alone. Something sees me...

Cold fingers. Hands. What do you mean? Do you know?

You can sense it, right, Sam? We're...so close...

Why are your hands like ice? Why are you so cold?

It's cold when you're alone. It's cold. It's cold when you're a monster.

What?

Sam, your Mom always knew about you. She presses his hand sympathetically. Everyone knows. You know too, don't you? But you never say it. That's why you can't. You can't help me.

Amber?

Her eyes are shiny.

Call me, Sam Winchester.

"Sam?"

At the touch on his arm Sam sat straight up and startled the little girl with the sandy blond hair. She gasped and Sam had to back himself down from complete panic. What was...that just now? When he had been...nodding off? His name? Amber? He shoved it away and down, far down, so that he could damage control his completely ungracious and ungentlemanly wakefulness.

"Hey, Amber. Wow. I'm sorry, are you okay?" He felt his eyebrows come together and it almost hurt. He stretched his hand out and let it rest on the table a few inches from her arm.

To Sam's great relief, Amber swallowed and then smiled that very little smile.

"You were really asleep," she said.

"Oh, was I? Huh." That was scary. This wasn't the first time he had just passed right out in school. He was going to have to swipe a couple of Dean's treasured Cokes if he thought he had any chance of staying awake another night.

That thought led to an observation: Amber didn't look well either. She'd been pretty haggard yesterday, too, and the boy tried to decipher whether that meant she was worse today or not. Her face had been washed, but the skin was almost translucent under the fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling above them. If he stared too long, Sam thought he could see individual little blue veins in her neck and forehead. That couldn't be good.

"Hey, how are you doing?" He asked.

Amber pursed her lips a little and then shrugged. "The same."

There was a short silence-a silence in which Sam fumbled and felt under the microscope. Why was it so hard to just be normal when he was talking to this girl? Oh. Right. Because there was nothing normal about him.

And this was a girl.

Thankfully his gaze dropped onto the chicken patty sandwich on Amber's tray.

"Hey, let's have a bite to eat, okay?" Anything to get some food in her. She really was the tiniest 3rd grader he had ever seen. As a show of good faith, Sam pulled out his brown bag lunch and dipped inside it for his PBJ sandwich. To his surprise the sandwich (which was almost twice its normal size, leaking peanut butter and jelly into the wax paper like the scene of a horrible evisceration) was accompanied by a Payday candy bar. It slid out onto the table and stared up at Sam as he stared down at it.

Holy crap.

"Did your brother make your lunch again?" Amber asked.

Sam had to close his mouth before he made a reply.

"Yeah...I think." His voice trailed off as he ogled the bleeding sandwich. Had Dean lost his freaking mind? Or wait, shit, did he grab the wrong bag? He had done that before and it hadn't gone over well at all. In a reflex of pure terror, Sam grabbed the brown bag and inspected it. There was his name, all right. Right there-"Sammy" in black Sharpie. But there was something underneath it, fainter, scribbled in pencil:

"Eat all of this or I swear I will punch you."

Sam didn't know whether to laugh or be outraged, and the conflicting emotions the note engendered on top of the sleep deprivation threatened to turn him into a little barking madman. Man, when had Dean done this last night? Sam had been trying to fight off Dean's questions about why he was so out of it all evening, and so to combat sleepiness his brother packed him a lunch full of refined sugar and his most precious Payday bar? Man, he had been totally unfair to his brother.

Sam thought of his two nod-offs in school already.

Screw it. I'm definitely eating this.

Despite his growing jerkiness, Dean came through in a weird way; right now, this carbohydrate overload was exactly what Sam needed. A shard of guilt for his brattiness the night before was replaced by an absolute hunger for sugar Sam didn't even know he had. He ripped into the white package and sank his teeth into peanutty caramel goodness.

Oh yeah. That was the stuff. Solid fuel to get him through the rest of the day.

"Looks like he did something nice for you," Amber acknowledged and giggled at what must have been an expression of complete bliss and relief.

That giggle was kinda pretty. He wanted to see more of it.

Sam smirked around his chew. "Yeah, and he threatened to punch me if I didn't eat it. It says right here on the bag." He pointed to it. "I need instructions with my lunch. Did your lunch come with instructions?" He motioned to her chicken patty sandwich with mocky inquiry and Amber's small laugh, as she shook her head, continued to roll over him like a warm breeze. His efforts were further rewarded when she picked up the top of her bun and bit into it. Yeah, it wasn't the protein, but at least it was something.

They ate for a few minutes in companionable silence while the madhouse of the cafeteria turned around them. Presently, Sam noticed that Amber had stopped moving. He could feel her watching him expectantly.

But she wasn't looking at him, she was looking toward him to the top of his rucksack, the faded and worn green burlap peeking over the edge of the table.

"That's a really old-looking backpack." She commented finally.

Sam followed her gaze and perhaps really noticed it himself for the first time through the eyes of someone outside of the craziness that was his family. It wasn't a child's backpack at all-it was far too big, and the style was more suited to war than school but...

The letter!

Sam jumped as he woke up with the memory.

"Oh, hey, um. I have this thing..." He turned to his pack and opened it. The letter was sitting right on top. To his credit, he didn't even self-consciously check to see if anyone was looking when he slid it across the table to her. "I...hope you don't think I'm...weird. I had to write this assignment..."

Holy crap, was it getting hot in here?

Sam babbled something about Abraham Lincoln, he thought, and then just shut his mouth entirely. Her matchstick fingers touched the paper, almost reverently, and began to unfold it.

"Wait!" he said, feeling like a crazy person. She froze. "I mean...um. Read it later, okay? Like, when you go home."

"Why?" she asked, her long bangs shuddering with the blink of her eyes.

"Because...because then it would be like getting a real letter. It's not...really like a letter if you read it in front of the person who wrote it, right?"

Amber stuck her tongue out just a little bit to lay on her bottom lip. It was a thinking thing. She was happy and excited and wanted to read his letter right now and that alternately terrified him and made him exuberant past reason. But she nodded once. Hard. Almost as if it was the nod of a secret gesture of Deep Understanding.

She pulled the precious missive closer and then placed something of her own on the table. Amber's face was red and she bit at bottom lip nervously. She pushed it towards Sam after a few seconds of his just staring at the exterior of what appeared to be a little wrapped package. The "wrapping paper" was a piece of notebook paper that crayon had decorated with a childish yellow daisy bearing what appeared to be a little red dot. His name, "S-A-M," was penciled in at the bottom in blocky 3rd grade letters.

"What's this?" He asked stupidly.

She looked at him with such earnest brown eyes that he thought he might have to crawl under the table or be flattened under their weight. Instead of continuing to force himself up from it, he took it in hand, smiled at the wrapping, and opened it. A plastic ladybug ponytail holder fell into his palm. Upon a fast inspection he realized this was the one she was wearing yesterday, and it wasn't in her hair now. The ladybug was a little black, red, and white thing, a trivial piece of girl apparel Sam rarely took notice of, until yesterday. Until her. It sat in his palm now like a tiny living creature-precious and rare.

She wore it yesterday. She probably wore it to school today. I bet she wears it everyday. I bet this is her favorite one if she even has more than one.

"I...can't take take this," he said. And he was an idiot because that didn't sound gentlemanly at all but he just meant it was too much, too nice, too everything for him to have. And he didn't deserve it because he said he wanted to be friends but he knew he was going to have to leave.

"Please take it." Her face was insistent. "Unless...it's stupid and you hate it."

Sam had the presence of mind to at least shake his head. "No! It's not. I just. I mean..."

He was doing this thing all wrong and Amber was still smiling at him anyway. Did he really meet someone who got him?

"But...why? Why give this to me?"

"It's an early birthday present," she said without hesitation.

Birthday?

Oh shit. What was today?

"It's tomorrow, right?" Amber's question was more like a statement. "But tomorrow is a Saturday, so I wanted to give it to you today."

Sam shook his head. Was this a dream? There were some dreamlike qualities to it. The least of which was that he was just given an honest-to-God present from a girl.

"Oh. Wow. I...told you that?" Birthdays weren't exactly a big deal in Sam's life-not even his father ever treated them the way a normal father would. Except that it seemed to come with "leveling up" to a new stage of training. Where Dean was concerned, birthdays meant a new weapon.

"You told me yesterday," she replied. "I remembered it because my birthday is tomorrow too." She smiled. "Sam, you didn't even know it was my birthday and you gave me a present." Amber touched envelope of his letter with tiny fingertips.

Wait, what? Did he really just come right out and say when his birthday was? Sam tried to remember, but everything that happened before ten minutes ago was wrapped up in cotton sunk into the middle of a mountain at the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. Getting to those memories was perilous and exhausting and right now this moment felt like it superseded just about every other moment of his life, except, possibly, his birth. Or that one time he played checkers against Dean and beat him-the one and only time he ever played that game with Dean because Dean hated losing.

Sam covered his look of surprise, and despite his fondest wishes not to, he could help but wonder what Dean would do in this situation with a girl.

"Oh, a heh. Hey. I'm pretty awesome I guess."

Yes, that would be probably what he said. Which meant it was likely to sound completely wrong to a 3rd grader. But Amber continued to radiate a little grin..

Sam squashed that inner voice that attempted to remind him of his situation, of the complete and utter futility of this, of the high likelihood that her heart was going to suffer. Her heart. But she'll suffer now if I just...reject her present. She made wrapping paper for it and everything.

"Well then. I guess, if you really want me to, I'll accept it. But now I feel bad because a letter isn't exactly a present..."

"No, it is." She hastily interjected and even sat up straighter in her chair. "I mean. I think it is."

Man, Amber. She was a one-of-a-kind person. Nice. Observant. Thoughtful. And they even had the same birthday! That was a crazycool coincidence. But Sam was worried about that pale skin and sunken eyes, and she had only taken three bites of her chicken sandwich bun. She definitely needed to eat more. Further encouragement was on his lips when she stopped him.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you...sleeping okay?"

What? Oh shit. And, yes, wasn't he just thinking about how she was observant?

I can't sleep because the boogeyman is in my closet and might want to kill me.

Wow. It sounded so lame in his head. Not to mention unbelievable and scary to a regular 3rd grader. Just because he was burdened with reality didn't mean he had to curse anyone else with it. And wasn't that Dean's biggest no-no?

"Whatever you do, you can't tell anyone else about, you know, Dad stuff. They'd just either freak out or think you're crazy and take you from me and Dad. You don't want that, right, Sammy?"

Luckily Sam had already developed his cover story for lack of sleep earlier that day.

"Oh, um. Well, my brother has had this cold for a couple of nights. We sleep in the same room, so his coughing and sneezing and snoring and stuff keep waking me up. But I think he's getting over it. No big deal." Sam took a manly bite out of his PBJ homicide scene and practiced nonchalance like it was his job. It wasn't the second time he had lied. It wasn't even the hundredth time, and he knew he was fairly proficient at it.

Amber's smile faded. Her face fell.

Sam stopped eating, mostly because his stomach had suddenly crawled into his throat. Every little facial expression she made was like some kind of beacon that had been tugging at him since he sat down. Was this the power of Girls? Even in 3rd grade it was formidable. No wonder Dean was having a hard time resisting them in 8th grade.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

Amber looked down at her chicken patty. She looked at it a little too long. Her mouth opened once as if she was going to say something, and then it closed. Not a good sign.

"Amber?"

"Oh. I was just thinking about how my mom is working all night tonight."

Amber stopped talking and Sam's analytical brain sleepily took over, trying to fill in the piece that would make her frown. "So, she's going to be sleeping all day tomorrow on your birthday?"

She hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

"Oh. Hmm." Sam thought about it. It was his birthday tomorrow too. There was no guarantee he'd see his own father, and he was constantly telling himself he was okay with that, but at least Sam had Dean on his birthday. He always had. He could say a lot of things about his brother, but Dean was always really decent to Sam on his birthday. Amber, on the other hand, was going to be all alone.

What could he do?

There was no way Sam was going to sneak out of the motel room. Saturday morning cartoons were a religious obligation for both brothers, and there was no chance in hell he could escape Dean on his birthday no less. But maybe...

"What if I called you?"

Holy crap. He said the words. He said them and was actually, in his mind, committing to them. For real.

A little bit of the smile came back.

Sam scrambled for that patch of revealing sunlight as he grabbed a pencil from his rucksack. Flattening out the piece of colored wrapping paper and turning it to the uncolored side, he looked up expectantly.

"What's your phone number?"

Holy crap. He just asked a girl for her phone number. Holy. Crap.

"333-1816."

The pencil felt like a hot brand in his hand, the paper like an anvil, and he was constructing something real. Something permanent. For some reason, his hand shook. He didn't know how he was going to call her and not raise all kinds of hell in the motel room tomorrow, but he was going to do it. This was something important: Somebody needed him.

When Sam left lunch, he was riding on a sugar high and some unfamiliar sensation of empowerment...which lasted only until 3pm. And then it was if Sam had physically run into the side of a mountain and crashed. Hard.

Flash forward

March 3, 2007

Sam 23-years-old

Dean 27-years-old

Dean sat straight up. Being completely clothed and passed out on top the thin motel covers made it easier for him to get up, get his bearings, and then half fall to Sammy's side and shake him.

"Sam. Sammy!"

Jesus, this kid couldn't just sleep. Still couldn't.

"Dad!"

Shit.

Sam's eyes flew open. He grabbed his brother's arms and looked around wildly, a white-V-neck T-shirt eskew on his broadening frame.

"Dean? Where...where's Dad?"

Dean pushed it all down. Game face it, Big Brother. Game face.

"Dad's dead, Sam. Not here. Get a grip." And then his voice softened because the look on Sam's face was like he was three feet tall again. "Hey, Sammy. You were dreaming." Nightmaring? He hesitated too long. "Was it...was it one of those dreams? Those, um...psychic visions?"

Sam calmed. He began to breathe, but his eyebrows were going to pinch the scalp right off of his head. He licked his lips.

"I...I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. It felt...different. How...how could I see Dad? Dad's in hell. He's...in hell, Dean!"

"Okay, okay. Just. Just relax." Dean squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He'd been pouring them out for Dad all night, right down his throat, and maybe that hadn't been such a good idea in retrospect. He felt dizzy.

"What happened? What did you see?" Getting dream signals from hell was impossible, right? And If he was seeing Dad now then it couldn't be a premonition dream. Don't be paranoid, Dean. Kids can have nightmares about their Dads when they die. It probably happens to everyone.

Sam's expression blanked, reached back, tried to remember. "I don't know. It was weird, like, I saw Dad and...And there was a box."

"A box? Like, a curse box? Or a cardboard box?"

"No...s...silver. The box was silver. It reflected light."

"Okay, a silver box." Dean ran down a mental inventory of everything they had, everything they knew Dad owned. A box like that was nowhere. "Okay, where was he? What was he doing?"

"I...don't know. I couldn't see the room. It felt small. Maybe. It felt like...the box was important though. Like, he was...trying to show me this box."

Sam's tears leaked out onto Dean's arm. It was an impressive flow.

Fuck.

"Sam, it was probably just...just a dream."

"No, wait." Sam snagged Dean's wrist, his eyes scanning the empty air. "I do remember something from the room. It...it smelled like..." He stopped.

"Yeah? It smelled? Like what?"

"Like. Like green."

Dean blinked. "Wait, what? The room was green?"

"No!" Sam said insistently, "It...it smelled like green."

"Smelled like green? How the hell does green smell, Sammy? Like...like grass? Like weed?"

The little brother shook his head, "I don't...no. No it wasn't like grass. I would have said it smelled like grass."

Dean opened his mouth. Shut it. Gather the calm, Dean, don't spook the little psychic or disturb his wavelengths to the ether.

"Okay, so...green. It smelled like a color." Dean was incredulous.

Sam shook his head, "I know. I just. I can't describe it. I can't even be sure anymore. I don't know. But, Dean, it really felt like...like Dad was trying to show me something."

That pinged a note of concern for Dean. Dad's last words to Sam were embedded at the end of a fight. Dad's last words to Dean were in his ear...and Sam could never ever know them. Not ever. But Sam's dreams were getting more uncanny, out of control. They seemed linked to Yellow Eyes, and what if Sam figured out their father's whispered message on his own?

"Sam."

Sam grabbed Dean's arms and this time it hurt.

"Dean, I couldn't do it. You understand, right? You know why."

"Hey, just...Sam." And Dean knew instinctively that Sam was no longer talking about his dream. He was talking about the past.

"He was right there. Yellow Eyes was right there...and Dad was hanging onto him, inside...and Dad told me to shoot him. In the heart. He told me to shoot. He...he trusted me to do it. I had the gun in my hand, Dean, I had the shot and he told me...but how could he say that to me? How could he just...just expect me to...to kill him too? Is it...is it really all my fault?"

Oh no. Oh shit. There was a wild look in Sam's eyes and then it all broke open. No amount of Winchester floodgates were going to hold this back. "To kill him to kill Yellow Eyes with the Colt? Was that what I should've done? Those were...those were practically his last words to me."

Bad. Very bad.

"Sammy, stop! No one could expect you to do that. To kill Dad. Listen to me-"

"Why not?" Sam's voice was hoarse, loud. He stabbed an accusing finger at nowhere. "He did. He did, Dean. He expected that I had learned that lesson when I was nine. He said that to me in the hospital-you were there. He blamed me for it because I was supposed to've learned that damn lesson when I was a kid and I...I clearly didn't."

Dean shook Sam hard enough to rattle teeth. He was about to lose his own shit, and that could not happen when Sam was a mess. Had to be a rock. "Listen to me. Shut up and listen to me, Sam. He was just saying that because you were pushing his buttons. He was pushing yours. That's what you did. What you both did all the damn time. He didn't expect you..."

Sam became eerily calm, pooled tears in his eyes.

"Dean, he's dead."

"Sam."

"He's dead because he made a deal. He made a deal with the demon he hated to save you."

"Sam," warning tones were completely useless, but Dean was going to have a melt down. This wasn't...

"Why did he have to make that deal? If I had shot him when he told me to, then we wouldn't have been hit by the truck. He's right. We wouldn't've been in that position..."

"Sammy, you gotta stop!"

"...But if I had killed Dad, you would've hated me forever!"

The room became silent. Dean searched Sammy's maddened eyes and something in him crumbled.

"I couldn't hate you, Sammy. Do you understand me?" Hate this kid? This stupid, smart kid who used to repair injured bird wings, read encyclopedias, write stories that he hid or threw away before Dad could find them? Who begged his big brother to read him comic books about the tales of heroic knights and super heroes? Who patiently listened when Dean told him that their Dad was the greatest? Hate that kid? I carried you out of a burning building. I raised you. You tugged my shirt tails. I was your hero.

"You have to believe me, Sam. I could never hate you." His own voice betrayed the wetness in his eyes.

"You say that, but Dean..." Sam was inconsolable, "but he, he was...he was our only Dad, and the guy...that...man...was a shitty father but he was your dad. Our Dad. How could he have wanted me to...to...how could he have wanted to lay that on me too? Wasn't Mom's death enough? How much did he hate me?"

Dean grabbed Sam, then. It was a hug hard enough to break his back-to make him quiet. His arms ached, and his chest was split open and raw. He could feel the sweat drenching Sammy's back, the sobs that wracked the enormous frame that sheltered a spirit still so vulnerable.

"Sammy, you didn't start this...and Dad didn't hate you...I swear," but Dean was lying because he no longer knew. After Dad's last words to him, what he put on Dean's shoulders, it felt like Dad must have hated them both. Or else he was a coward. And Dean didn't know what hurt worse of the two.

John Winchester's presence was almost palpable in the room hanging over the two grown men who clung to each other for dear life.

Sam's voice was tiny in his ear.

"Dean, how do I make it right? So many already. So many I didn't save because...I was afraid...because I couldn't shoot..."

Dean's blood froze.

"You aren't a killer, Sammy."

Please...please never become a killer...because I can't kill you. I can't do it.

(to be continued...)