IF YOU READ MY 'BROTHER'S CANON STORIES' AND DO NOT READ UN-RELATED SAM/DEAN STORIES: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. You have been warned!

Legalities, as always Sam and Dean and all things Supernatural do not belong to me. They are the property of the CW and Kripke Enterprises. I wish they would share, but I don't think that is going to happen so I guess I will simply play in their sandbox for a bit.

Rating MA: For language and injured Dean and Sam throughout the storyline, they will also be M/M pairing although they are not brothers in this story. Pairings won't happen till later chapters, so be sure to review the warnings before reading.

If you don't like this type of thing, then don't read this story I am sure there are ones that would be more pleasing to you.

Author's Note: This story will follow Sam and Dean they continue their lives and try to deal with the challenges of their own pasts and tragic past of a child named Adam Milligan. This ride will get bumpy before it gets smooth, so be prepared.

Chapter 16

Suspicion Realized

Dean was sitting up in bed reading over a chart for a small boy that was suffering from an acute lymphatic tumor. The morning light was filtering through the slats in the blinds and bathing him in a soft yellow light that was almost angelic. The child's name was Justin and he was barely six years old. The picture of health when the photo was taken and now the after image being that of a bald emaciated, yet smiling little boy. Judging by what Dean was seeing in the test results, it wasn't likely that the little guy was going to see eight. The cancer had spread and it was gaining momentum far quicker than it should have. The radiation therapy wasn't slowing the rapid progression of the disease. The family was hanging onto what little hope they could find, but it was apparent that the outlook wasn't good.

He sighed in frustration and leaned back blinking slowly as his eyesight wavered and his chest pulsed painfully. The soft white blanket was pooled around his hips, the scrubs that doubled as his hospital gown sitting loosely against his pale skin. Sam would be pissed if he knew that Carmen had snuck this in to me. He thought with a twitch to his lips as he quickly stuffed the chart under his blankets. Dr. Karl Renier had taken most of his patients on while he finished healing up, but while Karl was a good Oncologist, he wasn't as good as Dean…and he didn't specialize in young children. There was a difference in being a cancer doctor and being a pediatric cancer doctor. Mostly Dean figured that it had something to do with the bedside manner. He was able to instill a will to fight in his young patients and that was worth almost as much as the chemotherapy. His green eyes flickered up at the sound of cart rumbling by his open door. Where are you Sam? He wondered silently.

The absence of the larger than life lawyer was painfully apparent as Dean's gaze swept his empty room. The rising sun was starting to pour light through his window and he longed to feel its warmth washing over his face. Dean hadn't realized how much he'd miss being outside in the sunlight, how much he missed running in the mornings with Sam. Prior to his accident they'd run almost every morning, neither of them saying anything, but both of them relishing the quiet time together. The soft patter of their combined pace on the asphalt had been soothing.

A quiet knock at his door had him swinging his gaze in that direction. Agent Richardson was standing outside the door, his broad shoulders taking up the small window. The FBI man was wearing the typical blue suit, although he'd obviously had his tailored, and the perfectly quaffed hair and chiseled jawline simply added to his classic good looks. He smiled and waited to be invited in, a briefcase in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.

"Come in." Dean called. He shifted his legs and swallowed as a stab of pain in his chest caught him off guard as he pushed himself upright. The heavy door pushed the remaining of the way open and the federal agent slipped through, as it swung shut behind him.

"Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Winchester." He said quickly. The blonde hair was perfectly styled, like something out of GQ, and he was dressed in a crisp white shirt and standard black tie that screamed 'federal agent man'. Dean smiled at his own internal dialogue and then turned his attention to the man waiting for him speak.

Dean chose not to answer that. He hadn't really had a choice about seeing the man staring at him with interest as he set his briefcase down on the end of the bed and rifled through it. Richardson pulled out a thick envelope with a military logo on it and pulled one of the leather chairs closer to Dean's bed as he sank into it. "So, we haven't been able to find Dawson at this point." His voice was deep, like Sam's, but he had a distinct accent that sounded like he was from Texas.

Dean gulped and nodded. "Not surprising." He would have been surprised if Dawson had left any sort of trail for the men to follow.

The agent raised a light colored eyebrow before continuing. "He broke a long term lease on an apartment two weeks ago and apparently no one has seen him since June 3rd." He waited as the significance of that date dawned on Dean before continuing.

June 3rd was the date of the explosion at the hospital…and in Afghanistan. He scrubbed his hand over his face when the connection collided with his memory. The slight shake to his normally steady fingers made him cringe as the memory hit him. "The explosion…" He murmured.

"Same dates…I know." The other man said as he placed another smaller file on the bed. "This is what we know so far…" He raised expectant blue eyes to the doctor's face and waited.

Dean picked it up and blinked in surprise. There was very little information inside the folder and certainly nothing that was going to send the feds in the right direction. Dawson was a lot of things…but monumentally stupid wasn't one of them. "You can't find him can you?" The words were more of a statement than a question and Richardson simply nodded. "Oh…"

"We were hoping that you might be able to help with that." Come on little fishy…take the nice bait. Richardson thought as he watched the emotions play across the medical man's face. He knew this man's background and he knew that Dean wouldn't allow innocent people to pay if he had a chance to stop it.

Dean's green eyes snapped up to the man's face. "How? I haven't seen Dawson for almost ten years. We didn't exactly keep in touch after we were discharged." His voice shook slightly, but he shoved the emotion down and carefully dropped the well-constructed mask of indifference into place.

Richardson swallowed and leaned forward. "We think that he'll try again."

That got Dean's undivided attention. "What? Why?"

"We have reason to believe that he'll come after you again…he wants you to suffer for what happened to your unit…and him." The man leaned away and steepled his fingers as he explained the psyche reports he'd been reading for the last two days. "He blames you for everything that's gone wrong in his life since the explosion. He wants you to suffer like he's suffered." The agent watched as Dean blinked in surprise. "It's a pretty common psychotic response to disappointment. Find a target, focus all the negative energy and then try to destroy that person's life." As a matter of fact he and the other agent's were actually surprised that it had taken Dawson this long to come after the doctor.

"But that doesn't make sense…Why kill all those people if he just wanted me?" The guilt was flooding through Dean like a Tsunami taking down his barricades faster than he could throw them up. He was staring at the lawman like he'd just been hit in the back of the head by a brick…all wide eyed and frantic faced.

"Because that's the best way to hurt someone like you, Dean. Hurt the people around you…the ones that are innocent of the offense." Sam's voice interrupted the men and Dean's tortured eyes met the worried gaze of his partner. He hadn't even realized that Sam had arrived at the hospital. Dean had been so invested in what he was talking about with Agent Richardson that he'd missed the worried lawyer lurking in the doorway for the better part of the conversation.

"He's not wrong." Richardson said as he stood and shook Sam's hand before sinking back into his chair. His gaze was drifting between the two men as he watched them each take in what this might mean for them.

Sam moved around until he was the other side of the single bed and gently sat down next to Dean's hip. The room was warmer than he would have liked and the haunted look on Dean's handsome face was almost tragic as they waited for the lawman to continue. "We were able to track down some of his old friends of from school and what we learned is nearly classic psychotic behavior. It appears to have started from a very early age. Neighborhood dogs disappearing and then turning up in random yards, gutted and posed in disturbing ways." He swallowed as he remembered the photos from the local paper. They'd been disgusting. But the locals had never been able to pin anything on the boy…they'd merely suspected his involvement.

What little color had been in Dean's face when Sam walked in, drained away as he connected some of the dots that he shouldn't have missed in the first place. But because he'd been attracted to the guy, he'd missed the signs. He hadn't been thinking with his upstairs brain and that had led to the tragedy that had ultimately killed hundreds of people a decade later. "How do we catch him?" He said softly. Dean carried so much guilt already and adding that dump truck load was the information that had just been laid at his bedside and it felt like it was crushing the wind from his lungs. His life was one big catastrophuck after another and he wasn't exactly sure what to do with that realization. Was he just poison? Did he contaminate everything that he touched…the way his father had told him? He didn't know anymore.

Sam watched his breath held as the Dean literally turned the color of his bleached white sheets. His forest green eyes blowing wide in surprise and then narrowing in panic at what the man had just revealed. Sam's long finger's gently squeezed Dean's wrist in silent support as he waited for him to speak. Oh God Dean…please just say something…he thought silently.

The past seemed to be holding some kind of razor blade against Dean's neck. Like no matter how much good the man did in the world, the sins of his father would never be washed from his soul. Sam could see the writing on the wall. Dean was going to make a connection between his own fucked up childhood and the attraction that he'd felt for this psychopath. He'd somehow think that he'd deserved this and that it was another black mark against him. And one thing that Sam had learned about Dean over the years, he was going to go into shutdown mode. The last time that had happened was after the accident where Sam had been nearly killed…and neither of them had escaped unscathed.

Richardson must have seen something similar in Dean's face because he started speaking very slowly. "Dr. Winchester…I wouldn't be too hard on myself about this." His blue eyes shifted to Sam's worried gaze and then back to Dean's blank stare. "He fooled everyone. The people in his town had no clue about his obsessive tendencies until long after he'd left. The town just thought he was this sweet little boy that had lost his mother under horrific circumstances." He swallowed hard before he finished where that line of thinking was going to take them. The agent reached back into his briefcase and pulled one more file out, he handed it to Sam first. "The police never put it together…not until I took my suspicions to them." He watched as the lawyer raised an eyebrow before taking the file.

Sam opened the thick manila envelope and his mouth popped shut with an audible snap as he stared at the police report and the graphic crime scene photos. "His mother?" Sam asked quietly. The other man simply nodded.

"He murdered his own mother, Dean. He gutted her like an animal…Dawson was so young at the time; seven to be exact, that the police never even suspected him. The lie he'd concocted was so plausible…" Richardson's jaw clenched in anger before he continued. "He got away with murder that night and…for the last twenty years. Then he joined the military, met you and then you became the focal point of his obsessed fixation. Much like his mother had been when he'd been younger. He had a pathological need to control the people in his life."

Dean was staring at his hands lying limply in his lap. He never would've suspected that Brandon was this fucked up. How could he have missed all the signs? He'd grown up in an abusive home with a sexually perverted, drug dealing father, and he'd still managed to stay blind to this man's perverse sense of love. He'd chalked it up to the man's intensity…which was one of things that had drawn Dean to him in the first place.

The agent stood up and quietly collected his paperwork. He looked over at Sam, the apology clearly expressed in his eyes. "I'm going to leave you two alone to talk about this, but if you're amenable to it, Mr. Winchester, we have a plan to catch this sick son of a bitch." He looked away for a moment and then back again. "Please call me if you're interested in helping." He waited and then sighed when Dean didn't answer. "The plan hinges on you, Dean."

Dean's eyes flashed up to his in surprise, but he remained quiet as the agent gathered up his gear and quietly left the hospital room.

"Oh my God, Sammy…" was all Dean could manage before the alarms went off and his eyes rolled back in his head as he slumped against the pillows.

"Dean!" Sam cried as he lunged to his feet. He hadn't been surprised by the fact that Dean had taken the news in silence. But he hadn't expected the heart rate monitors to start screaming in protest or for the man he loved to collapse against the pillows in a shuddering pile of convulsions.

Dean was thrown back into a memory that had been all but scorched from his mind. He and Brandon were on a mission…other members of their team following slightly behind them. They'd been tasked with intercepting a young man that was carrying the plans for a potential terrorist attack. The boy was barely fifteen, but he been a mule for the Taliban for most of his young life. His route had been plotted out by intel and their team had been sent in to catch the kid…alive.

He was crouched down behind a large steep drum at the edge of the structure where the kid was staying. Dean's job was to hang back while the team members completed the mission. He was there in case anyone was injured and that was it. So he'd settled back into a semi-comfortable position to wait. He hated that he wasn't going to be helping his team out on this one…but orders were orders. Brandon had taken point and the look of anticipation in his eyes had made Dean shake his head in wonder. How the guy got that excited about a potential confrontation was beyond the medic.

The sudden patches of light and the blasts of gunfire had Dean hunkering down deeper into his hiding spot. He pulled his M4 up and took aim at the entry point of the building. They knew it as the 'fatal funnel'…it was where the guys would push any adversaries through. All Dean had to do was wait. The first man through was an easy shot to the chest, the man toppled over in a tangle of limbs. The second person was a young woman…she was covered in the traditional burka and screaming as he scurried from the structure. Two of his own men followed her out…but Brandon wasn't among them. Dean's heart pounded as he watched the door for his friend. Finally Dawson's form stumbled out of the building. He was covered in blood, his clothes were torn, but he was alive.

Dean hadn't thought anything about the incident…but as it replayed in his head he began to wonder about the death of the boy. The report had stated that he'd attack Dawson in close quarters combat and that the ranger had had to defend himself. But the way the boy had been killed? It had been more like an execution style…like something out of Deliverance. But Dean hadn't made that leap. It hadn't occurred to him that Dawson was that type of man…no not a man…a monster.

Pressure was building in his chest and he wanted nothing more than for it to just stop. Like a balloon that refused to be popped no matter how much air was blown into it. Pain was radiating outward like a merry go round. It was starting in the center of his chest and picking up intensity as it moved toward his limbs. The sudden contraction of his muscles was pulling at his stitches and Dean was convinced that if he breathed his insides would just rip open and spill his guts all over the floor. He clenched his jaw without thinking and his fingers curled into fists, leaving small crescent shaped wounds in his palms.

He kept seeing Brandon's face and the blood that had covered it that night. The glee when the man had told him about the kill. Dean had pushed it off as an adrenaline high from the firefight. He couldn't deal with this at the moment…he allowed the darkness to descend as he felt his mind drift.

Sam was horrified as he was shoved, once again, to the back of the room. He watched as the doctors worked to stop the seizure. He'd known that talking with Richardson might trigger some sort of response from Dean…but he hadn't expected this. And now as he watched, terrified, he wished that he'd gone with his initial reaction, which was to tell the agent to wait until Dean was stronger. But the idea that there might be a second attack had spurred him in a direction he wouldn't' normally have taken.

XXXX

A man in surgical scrubs watched the activity from the edge of the hallway. He shifted back into the shadows, a small caliber weapon hidden just behind his hip. He'd have to find another avenue to take out the doctor and his lover. After all he'd waited ten years…what was another few weeks.

Sam finally couldn't stand watching Dean struggle, he had to step out of the room. His air was catching in his throat and he found his hands clasping his thighs as he leaned forward to gain control. Movement off to his right caught his attention, he looked up and caught sight of the back of a nurse moving away in a pair or odd colored purple scrubs. Something about the man made Sam stand up and stare. The guy turned just before he disappeared into the stairwell and that's when Sam saw the scars…and the disfigured face. Brandon.

TBC…

Author's Note: The action is rising and Dean is not handling it too well. Although in his condition…who can blame him. Sam is going to be getting more heavily involved as Brandon closes the noose and Agent Richardson has a definite role to play. Adam will be making an appearance in the next chapter…so watch for that. Thanks to everyone that has read and reviewed this story…much appreciated.

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