Well, I finally got around to doing another multi-chapter fanfic for the Supernatural fandom. I decided I needed something set in Season 1 though this turned out to be an angst fest, but oh well, I hope you all enjoy it anyway. I've been mulling this one around in my mind for a while and finally got to writing it. I hope my baddie is okay and isn't too cliché, but let's be honest the SPN baddies kind of are :P

Disclaimer: Not mine, apart from some OCs but I think you can tell :P

Warnings: Rated for heavy angst, torture, and some language. Nothing you wouldn't likely see in an actual episode.

What Doesn't Kill You

A Supernatural Fanfic

Chapter One

Dean opened his eyes blearily to unfamiliar surroundings, groaning. He tried to focus, take stock of where he was, what was around him. He was lying on his back, and he was inside, that was about all he could tell for the moment. His head ached and he tried to raise a hand to feel for injury, but found himself unable to move. His hands were resting up by his head and he panicked for a moment, thinking he might be paralyzed, then realized he was, instead, bound flat to a table or something. Not much of an improvement, but at least he knew he had the option of escape, of running. That always made him feel better.

Now the important part: where was Sam? And how had they managed to get into this situation?

He turned his head to one side, his sight finally clearing a bit. He realized the reason he couldn't see was that he had dried blood covering his eyes, likely from his head wound. He could feel it flaking off as he blinked several times and strained against the ropes to rub his eyes against his shoulder to get the rest of it off. He was finally able to see the room he was being kept in. It looked like it had once been a dining room due to the table, but there appeared to be no current occupants in the house as it was definitely lacking that lived-in touch. He was lying out on the table and tied all too tightly for his liking. Someone had also decided to remove his jacket and over shirt, and there was still the fact that Sam was nowhere to be found.

He opened his mouth to speak but only a croak came out. He tried to make his tongue work and finally groaned, "S-Sam?"

No reply. Dean jerked at the ropes but made little progress, still in a slightly delirious state. He growled out several choice phrases, and finally gave up, slumping back on the table and resigned himself to waiting for whoever had tied him up. Now all he needed was to be able to remember what had led him here. His mind was a bit on the fuzzy side…

A door was heard closing somewhere in the house and then steady footsteps, coming closer to where he was. He knew by the gait it wasn't Sam, and he tensed, ready for whoever came through the door, even if he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

And then a blond woman appeared in the doorway, smiling as she saw him awake, and leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Hello, Dean, glad to see you're awake."

And Dean remembered everything that had happened in the last couple days.

"Dude, why witches? I hate witches!" Dean groaned over the music blaring in the Impala as he gripped the wheel tight and continued on to their destination of a small town in Iowa.

"Well, I don't know what else it could be," Sam replied, rubbing his hands over his face. Dean glanced sideways at him. He knew Sam wasn't sleeping; it had been nearly a month since Jess had died, but Dean knew well enough that it hadn't been nearly long enough for the nightmares to stop. He slapped Sam's knee to get him to come back to the conversation.

"Well, I guess we should look on the bright side. We do get to gank some witches!" Dean told him with a grin, and took the proper exit. "Let's find a motel and grab a bite to eat. We'll get to business first thing tomorrow."

And they had, just as planned. They got a good night's sleep, or at least as good as they got anymore. Dean was woken several times by Sam's restlessness and had to get up and nudge him. Just a simple hand on his shoulder or the back of his neck to let him know he was there. It was strange, Dean thought, after doing it for the third time, yawning as he slid back into his own bed. He had only been back with Sam for a month or so after those two years he hadn't seen him, but everything had come back to him as instinct. The protectiveness—the role of being the older brother. He had always known what to do for Sammy, had always been there to protect him, and nothing had changed despite their separation. It was good to think they could go back to what they were. True, they were still working a few things out, getting back into the swing of working together, but it didn't take nearly as much effort as he had anticipated.

The next day they had gone out into the town and asked around to see if they could find the source of the witch activity. During the course of their investigation, they had come across Cassandra, a super hot blond who Dean was more than happy to try and charm while Sam asked the most important questions.

Cassandra's friend had been a victim of the witch's antics: dying a nasty death of choking on razor blades. Dean offered his sympathy and handed Cassandra a tissue when she broke down during the story. She wasn't able to tell them much, only saying what most people said: there wasn't anyone who would want to hurt her friend.

"Do you think anyone really takes the time to know their friends anymore?" Dean asked his brother as they drove to get something to eat after interviewing Cassandra. "I mean, how many times are people actually not hiding something?"

"I don't know, Dean, but do you think there's something not quite right about Cassandra?" Sam asked, a thoughtful look on his face.

"Do you have eyes, dude?" Dean asked him with a wink. "I didn't see anything wrong with her."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Well, maybe if you would have kept your eyes where they should be, you would have noticed something was wrong when she was telling the story."

"Like what?" Dean asked, getting impatient.

"I don't know," Sam sighed. "I just have a feeling is all. That there's something she's not telling us."

"Well, we have a couple more people to talk to and if we can't come up with anything, we'll go back and see if she is hiding something." He grinned. "If she is, I might be able to persuade her to talk."

"Dude, seriously, would you just for once think with your upstairs brain?" Sam groaned as Dean pulled into a diner and he got out of the car. Dean made a face at his back and followed him inside.

They did find something interesting in their further investigations, however, and that came in the form of something Cassandra had failed to mention. That there was a man involved.

"So this guy has been seen around town a lot lately, and not only that, but with all the victims not long before they died," Sam said, looking over notes in their hotel room that night while Dean checked the mystery man's information on the computer.

"Do you think this is what Cassandra was hiding?" Sam asked.

"If she was actually hiding anything," Dean replied. "But I agree that we should take this picture to her tomorrow and see if she has seen him."

They never got that far though, because the instant they were walking up the path to Cassandra's door, they saw the very object of their interest burst from some bushes and run off down the street. Sam and Dean raced after him, following him to a foreclosed house on the street and took part in a resulting tussle, which ended in a few bruises given to the Winchesters and one dead witch.

"Dude, man-witches are so wrong," Dean said as they destroyed his grimoire.

"Dean, they're called warlocks," Sam couldn't help but say.

"Well excuse me Mr. Politically Correct," Dean snorted. "I got this done. We'll come back tonight for the body. Can't really haul it out of here right now."

They went back to their motel, and came back to the abandoned house after dark only to find that the body was no longer there.

"Oh crap," Dean muttered. "That's not good."

"Where could it have gone?" Sam asked as if the dead man-witch could have just walked away. "Who could have…?"

And up to that point was about all Dean could remember. Everything else was just a flash of bright light and sudden blackness.

"You were working with the man-witch the whole time," Dean said, grunting as he strained against the bindings again, still to no effect. "I guess you're one too then. Part of the same coven? And where the hell is my brother?"

She smiled coldly at him, coming into the room and leaning over the table. "Sammy's fine for now. I didn't want to get started without you. And yes I did know Caleb. He was my brother."

Oh crap, Dean groaned silently. This wasn't going to end well, he could tell. A vengeful witch is the most dangerous kind. Not that they needed even that much incentive to be vengeful.

"Look, I'm sorry about your brother," Dean said, trying to keep his voice conversational. Try to appeal to your captors, right? "But he was offing people, and you can't do that. That's how all of you people always get caught. You think you just want to learn a few spells, make someone fall in love with you or something, but magic never ends well, and usually results in death; mostly other people's but sometimes yours as well."

"Those people deserved to die," Cassandra said, leaning over him with a growl.

"Do me a favor and define 'deserved' for me in your dictionary," Dean replied sarcastically.

"Maggie stole my boyfriend from me and didn't even try to hide it either. And Ray wouldn't stop mouthing off at Caleb. He's been torturing him since high school. He never got over it."

"Yeah, so they weren't the best people in the world," Dean said. "But in my experience people talk to each other, Cassandra. They don't make them choke on razors or boil them in the shower!"

She smiled cruelly. "You killed my brother Dean. You killed him without any talking. You never asked what he was doing, you never even made sure he was the right person." She took a knife from the back of her belt and pressed it to Dean's throat, pushing his head up with it. "How can you blame me for these things when you know you do the same?"

"It's my job to kill things that threaten the general populace," Dean told her with as charming a grin as he could manage in his position. "Family business."

"Well witchcraft is my family business," Cassandra said. "My mother and father were too, but they met with strange accidents. Likely one of your kind." He flinched as the blade slit his neck warningly. He felt the warm trickle of blood slide down his skin. She traced the knife down his throat to his chest and carved a line over his collarbone, making him shift uncomfortably, gritting his teeth.

"So what are you doing?" he asked her. "I get that you want revenge. Why not just kill me? What's with all the dramatics?"

"Oh, I want to kill you all right," she said and dug the blade in deeper, carving down the middle of his chest. Dean cried out as he felt blood well from the wound and seep into his t-shirt. "But I'm going to take my slow time of it. In revenge for my brother, and for all the other countless innocent creatures you and your family have killed."

Dean chuckled, shaking his head. "Oh, that's rich coming from you. How many more people did you and your parents off in their day? Anyone unlucky enough to piss you off? Cut you off on the road maybe? Put mayo on your sandwich? That could be hundreds!"

"We're not so petty," Cassandra snarled.

"You could fool me," Dean retorted before crying out in pain as she sliced the knife viciously down his right ribcage, to the bone. She leaned over him, grabbing his chin roughly in one hand, her face inches from him.

"I don't think you fully appreciate exactly what I am capable of, Dean Winchester," she said in a low voice. Her other hand found the fresh wound on his ribs and she dug her fingers in. He tensed and fought back a scream. "When I'm done with you and your brother, you will be sorry. I promise you that. And on top of that, you are going to confess to me everything and everyone you have ever killed and I'm going to carve a reminder of it into your flesh."

"Yeah, like I'm going to do it with those results," Dean snarked then gasped as he felt the blade burn across his stomach.

"I have ways of getting what I want," she told him with a coy smile, bringing the knife up and tapping it against Dean's lips, painting them with his own blood.

"Yeah, I'm sure you do," he said, trying to keep up his bravado, but it was fast failing. Damn he hated witches! "Look, do what you want with me, I was the one who shot your brother, but let Sam go."

She laughed, her eyes flashing with a dangerous light. "You're seriously trying to bargain with me, Dean? No, you see, I'm not about to let your precious baby brother go. He's part of my plan for revenge."

"No, come on, please," Dean tried but she stopped him with the tip of the blade pressing into the soft part of his throat again. He gulped against the blade.

"No amount of begging with do anything," she said. "Now, I think it's time we go visit poor Sammy, don't you? He was very anxious when he woke up just a few minutes before you did and didn't find you there. Now," she leaned in close to him again, keeping the knife point where it was. "You're not going to try anything are you? Because you don't know where Sam is, and if you even think of running, I will kill him. And you won't get out of the house anyway. I've set wards, and you can't cross them. She tapped his wrist and he winced, realizing for the first time that something had been carved there, probably a sigil of some sort. "But if you cooperate, I'll let you go see your brother."

Everything in Dean told him to fight, all his instincts that his dad had trained into him for years. But he knew he couldn't now. He saw that Cassandra was not bluffing, and he knew better than to trust a witch. He knew well enough that she could kill Sam from where she was standing now, and he couldn't risk that. Not his little brother.

"Fine," he said finally.

"I'm glad you decided to cooperate," Cassandra told him with a smile. "I would have hated to have to finish this before the fun had even gotten started."

She unbound Dean from the table, but kept his hands tied in front of him. He sat up with a wince, and felt slightly dizzy from the wound to his head. He was probably concussed. He looked down at his left wrist and saw that there was a mark carved into it and he wondered if he might be able to elude its power by making another cut through it. That is if he got a chance to get hold of a knife.

Cassandra grabbed him by the arm and hauled him off the table and farther into the house down into the basement where he and Sam had only a few hours before killed the man-witch/warlock, now known to be Cassandra's brother.

The place was lit with only a couple bare bulbs and it was dirty but there were signs of use and Dean could see there were still several shelves of bottles that likely held ingredients for spells. He wished they had taken those out too, but right now he had other concerns.

On the other side of the room, a figure was suspended from the beams of the ceiling, toes barely touching the floor. His head was slumped forward at first, but he slowly raised it as Dean and Cassandra came in.

"Dean?" Sam's hoarse voice whispered.

"Sammy," Dean replied and felt his gut twist at the hopeless look in his little brother's eyes. Right now it looked like they were well and totally screwed.

Well, let me know what you thought of the beginning, good, bad, or whatever. I'm still editing, so it will be next weekend before I get chapter 2 up, but I'll try to get two chapters up next saturday to make up for it :) I hope you all liked this, and feel free to check out all my other SPN stories (and Hobbit ones too, if you like that) :)