I enjoyed writing this story and I sincerely hope you all enjoyed reading it. This is the end - and once again, thanks to those who let me know what they thought of the story.

Chapter Seven

- Full Disclosure -

"Don. Wake up, son. Let's get you back into bed."

Don opened his eyes slowly, amazed that he could do so considering someone must have sealed them shut with glue. He felt hot, his mind fuzzy with fever, and he noticed with no small amount of alarm, he was having trouble getting up. Resigned to needing help, he let the hands on both sides of him pull him to his feet.

"That's it. Let us help you." He heard his father's voice on his left side, then Jessica's voice, both concerned and scolding came from the right.

"I tried to get him to go back to bed earlier."

"That's alright, dear. I'm sure he probably just wanted to sit with Charlie for awhile."

Something was wrong. Don tried to clear his thoughts as they eased him back into the hospital bed. His father's voice didn't sound right. It should be angry, tight; it was neither. His father sounded tired and despondent and ... old. For just an instant, as Jessica lifted his overly warm and now swollen leg onto the mattress, Don did something he had never done before. He wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in baseball; never gone into the FBI; never caused his parents so much worry. It was moot, he knew, but still . . .

Charlie's worried voice from across the room stalled Don's guilty thoughts. "Dad, is Don okay?"

"Your brother's fine." Alan replied, tersely, pulling the sheet up and over Don's legs to his chest. "He just overdid a little."

Charlie spoke again and Don nearly groaned in frustration. "He went down to see Dean by himself."

Don shook his head, wondering if little brothers ever stopped tattling on their older brothers. "I'm fine, Dad," Don tried to counter, but his words slurred and there was a slight tremor to his voice. "The doctor said I should get up and move around some."

Alan opened his mouth, ready to point out that the doctor had also mentioned using caution and someone with him the first few times – then, abruptly closed it again. "Well, I guess that's between you and your doctor. You should know your own limits."

Don was immediately wary, suspicious, uncertain. The father he grew up with would not have let him off that easily.

Jessica, who had disappeared as soon as he had been settled into bed, reappeared with another nurse. "Becky," she said, with some authority, "I'll give him something for his fever. Can you see after his ankle?"

Both father and son remained quiet as Jessica handed Don a glass of water and two pills, and Becky wrapped a cold compress around his ankle. Jessica then took his vitals while Becky pulled his hospital gown aside to check the bandages covering his gunshot wound. Don's eyes traveled up slowly and found Alan's and he felt his chest tighten. His father knew; there was no doubt. The haunted look on his father's face, the pain-filled eyes, the shadow of despair that seemed to hover around him, all told him his father had been spared nothing; not the crash, or the bear or the shootout; he knew it all. Don turned his head away, closed his eyes and let the darkness close in around him.

A solid, drug-assisted eight hours of sleep did wonders and when Don opened his eyes the next time, he felt refreshed and alert. He scanned the room quickly; first to the clock on the wall, seeing that it was 7:18am, then to his father, reading in the green vinyl chair next to ... Charlie's bed was gone! Don sat quickly and Alan looked up. "They just took him down to X-ray," he explained. "He's fine. He was babbling to the technicians about how something called inverse-square law applies to X-ray. It was early – I don't think they were interested."

Don relaxed and Alan closed his book. "It's okay, really." he said. "Gives us a chance to talk." Alan sighed, then, as he watched his forty year old son close up and the sullen fifteen-year-old re-emerge.

"Don't go all James Dean on me. Remember who you are talking to, my boy. I perfected that rebellious look long before you were a gleam in your mother's eyes."

Don's eyes softened a bit, but his lips remained thin and tight.

"I spent some time talking with Ruby Hunter, Ranger Castiel and Sheriff Gordon. They had some very interesting things to say about . . ."

"I'm not sorry, Dad," Don interrupted, his jaw suddenly set, his dark eyes narrowed.

Alan wasn't fazed by his son's menacing attitude."I didn't expect you would be, son. Your mother and I raised you to do what you felt was right. And if you felt it was right to withhold the, well, let's say, more interesting aspects of your's and your brother's ordeal from me, well, then, that's up to you."

Don studied his father, warily. There was a lecture in there somewhere, he was sure of it.

Alan stood up and laid his book on the seat. He took a few steps towards Don's bed and stood before it, his hands wringing nervously in front of him.

"We – your mother and I – we weren't always fair to you, Don, and ... "

"Aw, Dad, don't ... "

"No. No. Now I need to say some things and you need to listen."

Don hunched his shoulders again and dropped his eyes to the floor but remained silent.

"It comes back to doing what you think is right. And at the time we felt it was right to give Charlie whatever he needed to utilize this ... this gift he had been given. You ... well, you began taking care of yourself – and that was a good thing. You became strong and independent and focused. It's served you well in this life you've chosen."

Here it comes, Don thought, rolling his eyes.

Alan recognized the long-suffering expression on his son's face and sighed again. "You know, Don, it would be nice if when two people were married, they were handed an all purpose guide to parenthood. It doesn't happen. Your mother and I were completely unprepared to be parents. What did we know about raising children? We knew protests and love beads and shaking up the establishment – not baby formula and little league and sibling rivalry. We floundered our way through as everyone else did. And we made mistakes, like most parents do."

"When you joined the FBI, we worried – sue us. We worried when we didn't hear from you for long periods of time – especially when you were working with that Agent Cooper. Most of the gray hair on my head sprouted out those nights your mother and I couldn't sleep and we'd sit up playing gin rummy, hoping the phone would ring and it would be you. I guess I did most of the worrying, because her hair never turned gray, huh?" Alan smiled, hoping the little dash of humor would help, but Don was staring at the floor, grim-faced, and he didn't look up.

"We got use to it," Alan continued. "But then I ... we lost her and the thought of losing one of you became a nightmare I was not ready to face. You, obviously, were the most likely candidate and I might have inadvertently made it hard on you."

Don raised his head, then. His eyes were clouded with regret and puzzlement. "Dad?"

Alan took a deep breath and confessed, "I might have been a little unreasonable in the past about your questionable methods of disclosing what you deem pertinent information when you or your brother are in danger."

Don looked more confused than ever, but Alan was on a roll and he added quickly, "I can see why you might not want me to know that you and Charlie carried Dean - as injured as you both were - exacerbating your already substantial injuries. And I can certainly see why you think the helicopter falling on Charlie might give me a few hundred sleepless nights."

Realizing where this conversation was going and that the long awaited lecture had arrived, Don reached for the only scrap of favorable defense he could think of. "It didn't exactly fall on him, Dad."

Alan's eyebrows drew together and he gave his son his best parental I'm-not-as-dumb-as-you-think-I-am look. "Forgive me if we see it differently, but it was in the sky – he wasn't – it fell ..."

"It was just a small one, Dad." The words slipped out before he was aware of it and Alan's silent glare told him how lame it had sounded. Suppressing a nervous chuckle, Don mumbled "Whatever."

"And we won't even talk about the shootout and fire," Alan announced - then, as if he had second thoughts, he sent his son a dark, derisive look. "kind of outnumbered?," he repeated with a disbelieving sneer. Don shrugged weakly and Alan went on. "But, the bear, Don. Charlie challenging a crazed, frightened, wounded, dangerous, yellow-eyed, demonic, mutant, grizzly bear – well, son – thank you for thinking I didn't want to know that."

Don wasn't sure what he was supposed to say, so he didn't say anything.

Alan took a few steps away from the bed, then stopped and turned back towards his son. "I know what you're doing – the same thing your mother and I did for you and your brother. When there was trouble – money problems, the occasional disagreement, Grandpa Mann's heart attack – we didn't say anything to you two. We didn't want to worry you."

"It's not like that, Dad."

"Oh, certainly the circumstances are different, but the concept's the same." Alan came back to Don's bed, his hands now holding onto the side rails. "You know when I said there was no guidebook on parenthood? We didn't need it. In the end it came down to three things; love them, teach them, and protect them. You turned the tables on me, kiddo. You're trying to protect me because you love me and I've learned something from that."

"Yeah?" Don's voice was hesitant, hopeful.

"Yeah," Alan repeated. "So, I propose a deal. When it comes to your job, I'll try to look at you as a capable, responsible man - instead of my son."

"Dad!" Don protested, though he wasn't sure why.

"What I mean is, I'll trust your judgment on what you want me to know."

Don nodded cautiously, as if agreeing to the pact, but he knew, instinctively, there was more.

"There's one stipulation" Alan added, and Don nearly rolled his eyes again. "You need to trust me, too. When either of you are hurt, injured, or just simply have a boo-boo, I want to know. I don't need details, I just want to help. Don't take that from me, son. Trust me to be strong enough to be there for you and Charlie."

It was not only fair, Don knew, it was probably the best deal he was going to get today. It would not be easy and there was no way he was going to promise his father something he wasn't sure he could do. "I'll try, Dad," he said simply.

Alan nodded his head once, accepting the terms, then sent his son a stern, steely-eyed look. "It's either that," he added grimly, despite the upturned lips, "or I could just ground you for a month."

Don laughed, a full-throated one, and his eyes sparkled. "That's more like it. You had me worried there, Dad. For a moment I thought it was Invasion of The Body Snatchers or that shape shifting thing."

"Nothing that mysterious or supernatural, my boy," Alan smiled affectionately. "Just an old man finally learning to trust his son's instincts."

Six months later . . .

Slowly, Don reached across his chest with his left hand, brushing against his newly acquired sling, and removed his wallet from his right pants pocket. His movements were clumsy and shaky, a direct result of the pain killers they had given him in the ER. With more difficulty than he anticipated he extracted the money from his wallet one-handed and gave it to the taxi driver.

He stepped up onto the porch of his brother's house and after another series of ungainly and uncomfortable movements he manged to retrieve his keys and unlock the front door.

He had noticed that there were no cars in the driveway, so he didn't expect his dad or Charlie to be home, but as he stepped into the entry, he called out, anyway, "'lo, Dad, Charlie. Anyone home?"

The house remained quiet and after a quick, habitual look through the green fluted bowl/mail receptacle sitting on the table, he headed for the couch. It took a moment to find a position that didn't irritate his dislocated shoulder - well, technically his recently relocated shoulder -but he was soon resting and breathing evenly.

He was startled out of his sleep by the sound of his father's angry voice. "What do you mean he was hurt? Why didn't someone call us?"

As Don struggled to sit up, Alan Eppes came into the house, followed closely by Charlie, David and Colby.

"We were still at the scene and he wasn't hurt that bad." David was trying for the 'in command' voice, but even to Don's sluggish brain it sounded like a poorly camouflaged apology.

Colby just shrugged and added, "We figured he'd call one of you for a ride home."

Alan grumbled and walked quickly towards the couch. Don was sitting up straight, his legs swung over the edge, the fuzziness fading quickly as his father approached. Alan sat down beside him. "Donnie, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Dad. David's right. It's not that bad. Just dislocated my shoulder again. Doctor popped it back in - a week or two sitting at a desk with my arm in a sling - no problem."

Alan sighed. He scrubbed his hand across his face and took a few calming breaths. "I thought ... I thought after that horrible experience in Black Rock we had reached ... an agreement. That you would let us know when you were injured – and let us help. Why didn't you call me?" There was anger in his voice; anger and sadness. "You disappoint me, Don."

Don's expression remained unflinching despite his father's wounding remarks. His voice was steady as he said, "I did try to call you Dad – twice. It went to voice mail both times."

For just an instant, Alan maintained his gruff, accusing, disbelieving position, then his face suddenly lost all color and his hand flew to his mouth. "I ... I ... was playing golf ... I, with Stan. They have a policy about phones on the golf course, you know."

Charlie nodded his head, looking like a wide-eyed, curly-headed bobble doll. "That's true. They do," he confirmed for everyone in the room, then turned to his brother. "What about me, though? I could have picked you up. I was at CalSci all day and I had my phone with me the entire time." Charlie's voice, while concerned and earnest, was also slightly smug and pretentious.

"Yeah, well check your messages there, genius. I actually tried you three times."

Frowning, Charlie pulled his phone from his jacket. His skin tone mirrored his father's ashen pallor when he looked at it. "I'm sorry." He rubbed his forehead with two fingers and held the phone out, as if they could see what was wrong. "The battery ... it died on the way ... this morning. I meant to ... but, I forgot." His manner now contrite and full of remorse, he murmured, "Sorry, I'm sorry. I ..."

"Hey," Don waved his hand dismissively, "it's alright. Don't worry about it."

"But you had to take a taxi here from the hospital."

Don shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "Didn't have much choice. The team was still in the field, and Robin's in Seattle. I even tried Larry and Amita, but ..."

"Larry's in San Diego ... and 'mita is ..." Charlie brushed his hands through his hair. " God, Don, I'm sorry."

"Charlie, it's no big deal."

Alan suddenly spoke, his voice steady and clear. "No, you're wrong, Don - it is a big deal. You tried to call us. You came here instead of hiding at home until the bruises healed like you have in the past."

Don met his father's gaze evenly. "I told you I'd try."

"And you did." Alan's voice had a touch of finality to it, as though the issue was closed. He stood up, passing his gaze over the four men. "Now, we're all here," he announced. "Who's hungry?"

"I could eat," Colby said, quickly.

"Yeah, it's been a long week today. I'm starved." David shrugged his jacket off and tossed it over the back of a nearby chair.

Alan smiled broadly, clapped his hands in front of him once, then rubbed them together. "Okay, how about some brats and burgers on the grill? Charlie, get David and Colby a beer."

Alan and Charlie headed for the kitchen while David and Colby eased themselves into the two chair opposite their boss.

Don called out as Charlie slipped through the swinging doors ahead of his father. "Hey, Chuck, grab a beer for ... "

Alan stopped, his hand on the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen. "Did they give you something at the hospital for the pain?"

Don gave it his best shot. "Yeah, but that was over three hours ..."

"I'll send Charlie in with a nice bottle of cold water." Alan quipped as he let the door swing shut behind him.

Don sighed heavily and fell back against the sofa cushions. Ignoring his two team members, who were trying hard to hide their amusement, he pursed his lips in frustration. "So much for being completely honest," he muttered.

The end

List of Supernatural names/references;

Becky (Rosen) - obsessed fanfiction writer, season 5

Invasion of the Body Snatchers - off-handed reference to "Swap Meat" 5-12

shape shifter - a being with shape-shifting abilities, "Skin", 1-6, "Nightshifter", 2-12, "Monster Movie", 4-5

supernatural - of or relating to phenomena beyond or outside of nature, AND, A Great TV Show!