Summary: John returns home with an ominous revelation...

And I am SO SORRY for making everyone wait while I got back into this obnoxiously time-consuming school thing because it turned out this chapter needed a great deal of editing. And I couldn't have done it without Agelade.

And she keeps alluding to stuff from this story in her own, so I have to keep up and be worthy of that. And this was coming...

HOLY CRAP AHHHHHHHHH SO THANKFUL! Thanks, Agelade! People, go read her season 9 "Lustra" episodes because she's a better writer than I am. And also she thinks Boogeyman is canon because I've successfully brainwashed her (nyahaha).

Thank you, SPNMum and Clowns or Midgets for reviewing and always reviewing. Seriously. Thank you so much for your patience!

-Caladrius

Chapter 9: "Gallows Pole"

Then:

"Okay, now, say 'thank you' or some crap, and then my perfect little 'Sam receives his awesome present from Dean' fantasy will be concluded." Dean made a photographer's box with his hands and centered Sam's bewildered, wet face in the center.

Sam could do that. Yeah, Dean was a great brother after all, changes included. He deserved his big finish. He definitely did. "Thanks, Dean. Seriously. It is awesome. It's the best thing I've ever gotten."

"Ahh, annnnd...scene." Dean dropped his hands and was clearly riding high on his triumph. Sam was inclined to give him the entire day to be smug about it if he wanted. Maybe that would be okay.

That was the moment when the front door burst open.

Almost as lightning fast as the gun was levelled, Dean dropped it.

"Dad?"

Now:

Sam's eyebrows drew together as the small ominous feeling from a moment before stabbed him squarely in the chest. He sat up too, clutching a black and red ladybug into a hand that was suddenly sweaty. There was something to the set of John Winchester's shoulders, at the gaze he leveled at his two boys, that raised the hackles on the back of his neck.

For his part, John stood a moment, his face inscrutable. Was he relieved to see them both all right? Was he getting ready to murder his brother? The silence and stillness hung in the room like a hangman's noose. No one seemed prepared to touch it or break it.

John nodded at something only he knew.

That seemed to be the cue.

"Dad, I can explain." Dean put his gun down, as if the confession required disarmament-a complete and total vulnerability to his executioner.

John put his keys on the table and then fixed his eyes on his eldest son.

"Then explain."

Oh, Jesus, there was no way out of this. Dean looked down, he pursed his lips. Sam wondered if he might actually be concocting a lie to control the damage. If he was, it would be the ultimate first. But John was a million years ahead of them, as usual.

"The truth will come faster, son."

Of course it would, but who in this house respected things like "truth?" Sam felt the blood rush from his fingers and his heart skipped a beat.

"I asked him to," Sam said, faster than Dean could even open his mouth. He'd seen Dean go over his cot once. The memory and the anger and terror of it wasn't cold. He could take this heat if Dean had been willing to aim a gun at his closet all night with intent to kill. It was his heat to take.

Dean looked over at him, his eyes huge. Oh, hadn't he seen that coming? Or was the concept of his little brother taking responsibility for something just so foreign that he couldn't process why his brother was inviting the axe?

"What? Sam, no!"

Sam climbed out of bed. His knees were shaking from the weight of this thing he was trying to take on: the full force of John Winchester's attention. His stare. His judgment.

"I could have kicked you out if I had wanted to." Sam tried to say nonchalantly. He looked at Dean and his brain was focussed on imparting two words through brother telepathy: Shut. Up!

"What?" Dean looked comically indignant and completely ignored the obvious message. "No, you couldn't've kicked me out. Like hell." He turned back to his father, trying to smooth it over somehow. "I just wanted to be sure. Sam was tired, he hadn't slept in nights and if there was something in the closet just then...Dad."

"Son, I told you to stay out of it." John's voice gave no indication that Dean's best intentions were going to mitigate one second of punishment for his transgression. Sam's chest felt tight. He shouldn't have let Dean do it. He should have pushed at him. He should have pitched some kind of fit, pissed Dean off enough so that he'd leave him alone to carry out that murder himself. Or die in the process.

Why weren't you here, Dad? Sam's brain finally asked the question. Why? Really? Was it only now occurring to him that all of this could have been avoided had their father ever told them anything at all? At the moment when it counted, wouldn't Dean have felt better, more confident, had he been there ? And, dammit, wouldn't Sam have, despite everything, given every ounce of his being to the task of proving himself? Wouldn't he have sold that little part of his soul for a second of praise, or even a nod of approval?

He wanted to say it. Accuse it. But what would be the purpose? So he'd feel better about completely putting his responsibilities on someone else again? Sam bit his lower lip and it felt better than this.

"Sam, what were my instructions?"

Sam swallowed, "Dad, I...I didn't want to. That's all. It's not Dean's-"

"Sam," John cut him off. Quietly. The danger was mounting. "I said, what. were. my. instructions?"

Sam cast his mind back, but it wasn't difficult to recall them, relive them. They had nearly stopped his heart after all. "Take the gun. Hold it under the covers. Aim for the eye."

"And?"

And?

"And...and Dean was forbidden to interfere..."

"Those were Dean's instructions, not yours. You missed something. Something important. Try again."

Sam couldn't feel his toes. He scrubbed his brain searching for the one piece he could have possibly forgotten. He'd have protested that that was all there was to it, except Dad's eyes were intense and his voice carried the weight of life in its balance.

When Sam did not immediately respond he looked instinctively at Dean. But Dean's face was blank. His brother shook his head slightly. When the silence hung in the air for too long and the Winchester sons collectively felt the fire beginning under their feet, John said, "I told you to face it down, son."

Face it down...

"You had to be there to look it in the eye. To face what it was giving you. It feeds off of your fear. That's how it had you targeted. That's what kept its attention. The second your brother took your place, it was over. I told you, you had one chance to get rid of it."

The silence in the room worked down deep inside Sam, past childish excuses and sheepish fear of past disobedience, to drill at the bedrock. What broke open was a pit of rage that had been hidden so carefully even Sam didn't understand why his face became hot. His shoulders shook with seismic activity just before a volcanic eruption. Clenching fists ignored the pain of the little plastic hair tie burrowing into his palm.

"That's it? That's what you care about?" Sam carefully didn't look at Dean who was probably sending some psychic brother messages of his own which consisted of primarily two words: Sam, Stop! But the thing he had squashed to his core was open and oozing and Sam had neither will nor inclination to stem the flow if it. "All you care about is killing the monster? Not the fact that maybe it was going to kill me? Maybe that it would have killed Dean? You left, Dad. You always leave. And...and you didn't tell us anything. You never tell us anything."

"I tell you what you need to know." John's expression hadn't changed. He looked tired, true, and unshaved, and there might be the scent of whiskey in the room, but that was always what he looked like, smelled like. To Sam anyway.

Sam stabbed a finger towards the way John had come in. "You walk through the door with a monster in the closet and all you are is pissed off that I didn't shoot it! When I couldn't see straight, when I was..." so scared he almost said, but didn't. If it was feeding off of his fear then everyone in the room already knew how scared he had been. For days. Still, somehow he couldn't admit that to his father out loud. He continued, "You're not happy that I'm alive, that Dean's alive. Not that. Just mad that-"

"I'm not mad, son!"

Sam and Dean jumped, and this time John raised his voice. It boomed, shook the cheap plywood drawers in their cheap plywood frames. Sam felt his anger become completely eclipsed by whatever his father was emoting. It happened so rarely, but when it did, it filled the room and left nothing in it. Not even air. It was suffocating. Sam was stunned to silence, his eyes wide.

"I'm not mad, Sam. I'm disappointed."

That was like a physical slap in the face. Sam's eyes dropped to the floor. God, ouch. It wasn't fair that that phrase uttered at him should hurt so badly. It wasn't right. His father didn't have the right to be disappointed.

John continued softly. "Sam, I trusted you to take care of this. You were a target, but not the only target."

A cold dread froze all last vestiges of Sam's fury. What...what was he saying?

"The boogeyman is a creature of pattern and profile and It doesn't leave hungry, Sam. If you didn't see it, then someone else did."

Sam thought back. His father had been gone every day for hours or more for the last several weeks. That was all...research?

"Dad...you...did you know I was a target? Right...right from the start?" As soon as Sam asked, he wished he could take the question back. He didn't want to know the answer to that question. He didn't want to know that his father had brought him here as bait, had put him through nights of terror and sleeplessness, that his own father could do that to him in the pursuit of a kill. That would be too much, wouldn't it?

John's voice was steely. It passed judgment without mercy but never answered his question. "I put it into your hands, Sam, because I trusted you. You could have-should have done it. The only way you could have failed was to turn away from the responsibility. And you did."

His youngest son felt the load of those words break across his back. He pressed his closed fist to his stomach. He felt sick.

Dean tried to intervene, "Dad-"

"Sam is right, Dean. It was his choice. He knew what he had to do."

"Where...where did you go, Dad?" Sam was whispering now. It was the only way he could get the words out, and the words wanted to come out. Stubbornly. It was his only and last protection against this onslaught of disappointment which had somehow succeeded in drying up the overwhelming anger than had been there before. "Why weren't you here?"

"I told you, there was a profile. You weren't the only possible target, Sam. And the other targets would have been children-children who would have had a harder time facing their fears than my son. Or so I thought."

"Wait...then. Then..." Sam felt his lungs heaving. It was hard to speak. "What...what happened?"

"Since it didn't come here, it went somewhere else." John looked old. Really old. And the tone of his sentence was like a flatline. It was over for him. His hunt was over and he had failed, was that it? His son was a failure and so they had both failed and someone had...

Dad was always so worried about everyone else!

But it was hard to be pissed about that now when the implications of his father's words were sinking like a broken boat in icy waters.

Sam shook his head because this was just supposed to be his problem. It had always been his problem, right? "What...happens? Wh-when it...takes you?"

John looked sincerely like he'd rather just stop talking now. He picked up his keys. They clinked in his hand and he closed a fist around them, staring at the shape of that in his silence. Almost reluctantly he put them back down and drew back his hand away purposefully. Was he thinking of leaving? Was he going to try to find out who was now maybe gone forever? Was he trying to run away from his pathetic loser of a son who had just disappointed him and had let some other person take his place?

Or was the truth that bad that he needed to be protected from it?

"The lore isn't clear, but it doesn't matter. A feeding ritual, maybe. Wherever the victims go, they don't come back. They're gone forever as far as the police are concerned."

Forever.

No.

Was it strange that now he didn't hate his father, he hated himself? Was it fair that he hated himself because he had failed at this? Did other 10-year-old boys ever wonder if they let someone die for them?

No. It just couldn't be. Kids in his class complained about parents who wouldn't let them play Nintendo until midnight. They didn't complain about having to save people from the boogeyman because their dads said so.

"But maybe," Sam tried, attempting to stem the tidal wave of guilt that was breaking right behind the flimsy barrier of denial he was still attempting to hold up. "But maybe it just...left. Maybe it didn't...take anyone else. Maybe it didn't."

John took a deep breath and Sam liked to think that it was because his father was considering how completely and totally right he could be. He only had a few seconds to cling to that flimsy hope before his father's next words destroyed it.

"It wasn't any of the ten kids on my profile list because the 'FBI' had already visited their houses in the last three days to make preparations. But the police scanner confirmed a missing kid early this morning. A little girl."

A...a little girl?

"M...maybe she just...ran away. Maybe she just wanted to leave."

John shook his head. There was a whole story in that one movement. It said so many things because this was Dad, and when he wasn't shouting he was communicating in these small gestures that carried the weight of a little girl's life.

"What...what did the police say?"

John said nothing. He walked to the window. He opened the blinds and the light rushed into the room, exposing them. Exposing everything.

"Dad!"

"That's enough, son. It's over."

"Sam, don't."

This time it was Dean. He had come from wherever else he had been in the room up until that point and gently took his brother's arm right above the elbow. So, his brother was getting all of Dad's "don't want to talk about it," vibes too. So what? He couldn't just...he couldn't just be expected to let it go. Dean and Dad were trying to protect him now?

"What did the police say, Dad? You don't think...you don't think I should know? Shouldn't I know?" Sam pulled away from Dean's hand and took a trembling step forward because this was his. Because this was on him and he knew it.

"Her mother thinks some stranger kidnapped her in the night when she was at work. People fall through the cracks, son-they don't get on a medical radar and they can't be researched. Like us."

Like us.

"What do you mean? What does the hospital have to do with this? Was she sick or something?"

"This is my normal seat. I've been...sick for a few days."

Well, no. Just...no. That wouldn't be it at all. So many little girls in this town and there'd have to be a dozen that were sick today. Right now.

Sam's hand was full of a biting piece of plastic. He was just going to do this now before he freaked himself, and he didn't really care what his father thought of him or Dean or anyone. His legs were shaking a little because the ugliness of this confrontation with his father was sitting on his shoulder, so he had to grab the back of the chair when he got to the table. He flipped through the pages of his history textbook so fast that he ripped page 104.

"Sam?" Dean's voice was honest and confused because you don't just walk out of a conversation with Dad.

"I have to make a phone call."

It was that simple to say. What were they going to do? He wasn't a prisoner here yet, was he? That little piece of wrapping paper was in his free hand and then the phone was under his fingers and the numbers on the paper were a little blurry because his fingers were sweating and smudging the crayon. And then his finger slipped. Did he hit two 1's and not an 8? God, why were his fingers shaking so badly? It wasn't like he was calling the President of the United States.

He put phone back onto the receiver and when he picked it up again, he made himself calm. Her hair tie was between his palm and the headphone. Safe. He made his fingers dial slower this time.

It rang once. The woman who picked up the phone was frantic, her voice shredded from tears.

"Hello? Hello?"

Sam couldn't speak and he couldn't move.

"Hello? Who is this? Please...please do you have my daughter? Please. Please, just...just let me talk to her. Just let me-"

Sam slammed the phone back into the cradle and shook all over.

Fuck. This wasn't happening. Fuck fuck fuck! He opened his hand. He stared at the little black and red ladybug that he had protected so carefully from his brother's ridicule all night long-Amber's little charm that had given him sleep for the first time in so long...and in return, he had killed her.

He had killed her.

"Sam, I'm really tired..."

It was a punch to the gut. The anger was all gone. His father's disappointment didn't even register anymore. And whatever petty little thing he had been trying to hide from Dean was just...

Sam squeezed his hand to the shape of his birthday present, bruising himself. He pressed it to his chest. Over his heart.

His heart.

It was all ripped to bloody chunks and so was the protective veil over the truth.

"I'm so much trouble."

Sam turned to face them. Dean and his father were like bugs in amber. In Amber. Frozen forever. Frozen. Cold. Gone forever.

He looked at his father and finally understood.

There was a stillness in that motel room as if there were not three men experiencing a moment of horrible confusion or revelation of one kind or another. Sam lived a lifetime in that moment because no one was going to be able to rescue him from it. For the first time, he was completely alone with the knowledge that he had made a huge and horrible mistake, and the only one he could actually blame was himself.

The silence was ruptured by his next three words:

"I killed Amber."

There was a beat and then Dean's eyes went wide. "Oh, fuck."

Can't swear like that in front of Dad, Dean. He'll slap your face. But I killed a kind, lonely little girl. What's my punishment? What do I get? What do I deserve? I had the gun in my hand. I had the gun right in my hand and I could have faced it.

Spirited away by the boogeyman. She had been seeing what he had been seeing, hadn't she? Tired and thin and sick and...and so much like him. But...but she wouldn't have known what to do. She was excited...

Because I said I was going to call her.

There was movement in the room. He thought he heard Dean call his name, and his father was saying something, but nothing was registering in Sam's mind except the knowledge that he was a murderer because he didn't do what he was supposed to do. What he could do. What he should have done. He was always letting other people take over his burdens. He was always so morally indignant about shooting anything, including a monster. And so Amber was gone.

She was gone forever.

Sam felt two hands on his shoulder. He was shaken a little, but not cruelly He looked up into his father's eyes. There was a kind of pain there, deep inside. It was a hard-edge pain. "Sam, you need to remember this. Remember this. If you won't pull the trigger when it's time, someone will die-you, your brother, a complete stranger. If you don't act when it's time to act, someone will die. It was time, Sam."

It's time.

Happy Birthday, Sam. You are a coward and a murderer.

Sam's chest constricted and oxygen and life was so far away because as much as he didn't want to, he got it. He perfectly understood what was going on, what had happened, what he had done.

There was some noise in the background. It was fuzzy and funny sounding, as if he was at the bottom of a well and there was a point of wavering light way, way up there where his brother was saying something like "You can't say that to Sam" because Dean lived in reality and he knew. Because he had helped kill things with Dad and he knew...

He knew Sam could never be more than a failure that needed to be protected, even from himself.

So it would go on. And on and on and on. And somewhere there was a mother who was crying for her little girl who was gone forever. In his hand was a little plastic hair tie that had once been in a piece of notebook paper wrapping paper with his name on it from a little girl who had smiled at him and who was now gone forever. The earthquake in his heart shook him down and covered him up and it was so hard to breathe.

More sounds-maybe a yell-up there somewhere where good people got to live.

The door shut, and Sam knew knew his father had left.

The severing of his presence cut any and all ties keeping Sam vertical. He lost sensation in his legs and fell to his knees.

"Sammy!"

Dean's arms were around him. He was holding him up. He was saying a bunch of things that were all running together in a way he hadn't heard in a long time. Maybe never before or ever again:

"Sammy, don't listen to him. This isn't your fault, okay? This isn't your fault. You didn't kill her, Sam. That monster did it. You didn't know. Sammy, look at me!"

He blinked, but Dean's face was a long way through a lot of cold water and ripples and heavy earth that pushed at him relentlessly. It was hard. He didn't want to fight it.

"Sammy!"

In a flash of sudden clarity, Sam felt and saw everything just as it actually was. Dean was frantic, there were tears in his eyes and a red mark on his face. Devastation looked different on him-Maybe it was because he was looking more like a grownup or maybe because Sam had actually never seen this expression.

It was amazing how horrible it was to know things. Sam knew things now, too, and he hated himself.

Sam opened his hand and showed Dean. It felt weird to uncurl his fingers from it, to let Amber go. It was wrong to think that this would be all he had left of her. It was so strange to imagine that she could be at a lunch table yesterday and never ever ever ever again.

Dean was looking at it. He was looking at it too and that hurt of reality felt right. It had to be real if Dean was looking at it too.

"She gave this to me." He said matter-of-factly, sharing the reality that he could no longer deny. "It was an early birthday present. Do you know, I killed her, Dean." He said it calmly, making himself accept it. It hurt so badly he thought he might die and immediately his mind closed his eyes to to the gallons and gallons of cold water between himself and everything else. The heavy earth wasn't oppressing anymore, it was comforting. It was dark and deep and if it seemed too quiet, then that was okay.

Dean grabbed his hand and closed it around the hair tie, as if he, too, couldn't even bear to look at it.

"Don't, Sammy. Don't. Blame me. Blame me."

But Sam wasn't going to blame Dean. He had been happy, secretly, that Dean was taking away his fear and giving him peace of mind. He had been happy at the actions that had led to this.

Amber, I was happy and you were terrified...and now you're gone and we'll never talk again. Never forgive me for that. Never forgive me.

His face was covered with water from his eyes and from Dean's. His body and mind squeezed into a small place. He grasped at it. Clung to it. Escaped into it.

Sam...

No. You're not here. You left.

Silver smile. I did leave. But I didn't leave. Did you leave? You can leave for now. I like you, Sam. Now you know. Did you think that was easy? You did, didn't you? But now you know.

I know. I know. I know it I know I don't want to know. I don't want to.

But you can't unknow, Sam. And someday you will know so much more. But don't worry; you can leave forever if you want. You can come with me ...

No. No...It's not time.

But it will be, Sam...It will be.

Three hours later, Dean stared at the wooden box with the intricate scrollwork. He thought about throwing it out. He really did. He wanted to burn down everything in this room that reminded him of Osseo, Wisconsin, but it was very likely the arson would cause some kind of trouble with the law, and they just couldn't afford it. Not with things the way they were now.

Dean stowed it all into the box, his feelings, and shoved it into Sam's rucksack. He stood up and flung it over his shoulder along with his own pack. The roar of the Impala's engine outside indicated that Dad was done on his end and it was time to go.

Taking a breath, Dean ventured to his brother who sat blankly on the edge of the cot.

"Okay, Sammy, we're going, okay? We're gonna get out of here. Doesn't that sound great?"

Sam said nothing. He'd said nothing for three hours. Dean knew something was wrong when Sam just stopped crying, stop clinging to his shirt after Dad left but this was...

Fuck.

Okay. Get your shit together, Winchester.

"Sam, seriously, come on, man. You're freakin' me out." He took a knee in front of his brother. Sam's eyes were open. His hands were in his lap, but he was looking past Dean somewhere else. Somewhere way way way far away.

Dean swallowed.

Sam didn't not make faces when he was sad. He didn't not make faces at anytime. When Sam was mad at you, you knew it. Sam wasn't mad, he was just...just gone.

"Seriously, Sam. Snap the fuck out of this. D'you hear the car? We can't make Dad come in here..."

And hell, that should have worked like a charm somehow even if it was just to get a sour face or a scoff or a look of, fuck me, terror.

But there was nothing.

"I'm gonna leave you here then." Dean tried, tossing the phrase off as if it was the easiest thing in the world to say when, be honest, it was like punching himself in the gut. Even when he got up and turned to leave, had gotten halfway to the door, his little brother never said a word and never moved. Dean knew, because he had been watching.

Dean pivoted his head and stared at the door that he hadn't touched yet. The door was still closed because it couldn't move unless it was acted upon, but there was Sam over there on the bed and he should have said something, moved something. After a threat like that he should have been running.

Without a word Dean turned back around, approached the cot, and reached down. He took Sam's hand and his heart gave a huge leap as it squeezed back a little, as if it knew something about holding on and was doing it even out of spite.

"Yeah, that's right. We gotta go now. Come on."

He gave an experimental pull. Sam slid forward until his feet touched the ground and he stood up, but his expression never changed. He was like a robot. Dean stared at the tenuous connection between them and reminded himself that he had stuffed his feelings inside of Sam's little birthday present, okay, along with that damn hair tie even though he shouldn't have done that.

When he walked to the door this time, Sam walked with him. When they left and Dean shut that door he cursed it. He pulled his brother to the Impala and opened the door. Sam obediently crawled inside as if running on a Sammy program: Into the Impala, out of the Impala, and so on and so on. Dean went around and got in next to his brother who sat so small in the seat, tilted halfway like a ragdoll discarded by the side of the road, and just stared.

Dean looked up into the rearview mirror and met his father's dark gaze.

Dean's face stung. His heart was beating at the inside of the pretty and badass box in the bag at his feet.

Dad looked like shit.

Dean nodded his head and that was the cue. The Impala went into reverse and the Winchesters shook the dust from their feet...

(to be continued...oh yes.)