I stopped protecting it.

And it fell, immediately and completely, the way anything falls the instant the thing quietly holding it up decides, at last, to step away.

That is all a scapegoat ever has to do, in the end, to be free.

Not attack.

Not destroy.

Just, finally, after all the long years of holding, set the weight down, and step back, and let the thing that was never really standing on its own fall down without her.

I set it down.

I stepped back.

I have never, for one single moment, wished I had picked it back up.