Supernatural does not belong to me, although I wish it did. I am simply playing in Kripke's sandbox for a bit. All rights and ownership are the property of Kripke and the CW network. I am not making any money from this; it is for my own personal pleasure.

Synopsis: Set at the start of Season One, Dean had been in a wheelchair since his father disappeared more than a year ago and he finally has to tell Sam… There'd been an accident that night and Dean had paid a very high price….one he still doesn't understand. The story will have some hunts from season one and possibly into season two…the brothers will continue their search for their father…there will be alterations to the hunts to accommodate Dean's new situation. I have every intention of returning Dean to good health before this ends…but getting there is going to be bumpy.

Please keep in mind that I do not have a Beta, so all grammatical errors are my own. Not Slash. Brotherly love and Angst only…

Please Review: So I know there's still interest

Previous Chapter:

Dean hauled himself to his feet. His head was killing him, the animal had tossed him into a rocky ravine and he'd had to haul himself back up. As he crested the small hill, the animal had been stalking toward Sam. Dean had finally found his pistol and he'd fired two rounds at the beast. Luckily, he'd been able to land one of the two and the animal stumbled before deciding maybe Sam wasn't a tasty morsel. And then his worst fear stomped into that clearing.

John Winchester and he was pissed. He'd taken one look at the busted leg of his youngest and then the beaten and bloodied head wound on his eldest and all he'd seen was red. It was Dean's job to protect Sam. It was the only job that John had ever really given the kid and he couldn't even get that right. The trip back to the road was silent…which never boded well for Dean.

The ground swam as Dean helped Sam to navigate the terrain and as the Impala came into view it was the first time that Dean wasn't sure if he glad to see the Impala or not. He helped Sam get settled in the back and then reached up to wipe the blood from his eyes.

"Get in Dean." It was the first thing that John had said to him since the woods.

"Yes sir." He climbed into the passenger seat and looked over his shoulder to see Sam clenching his eyelids shut in pain.

The hospital was nearly empty as they waited after Sam was taken back. A nurse had handed Dean an ice pack wrapped in a white towel. The smell of the place made him wish that he were anywhere else. Green eyes tracked around the empty waiting area and he sank further into the seat.

"You almost got your brother killed tonight." John said evenly.

Dean knew from past encounters that the soft-spoken version of his father was so much worse than the version that yelled and screamed. This side of his father had sent him out into the woods fro training in storms and had him running ten-mile runs. But to have him tell Dean that he'd almost 'killed' his little brother…that might be the worst thing that John had ever said to him. He looked at the floor and leaned forward as his eye-socket throbbed in pain.

"I was trying to pro—"

His father interrupted him before he could finish the thought. "Get up." Dean wasn't fast enough and his father was hauling him to his feet by the collar of his shirt.

Nausea swirled through his gut and Dean bit his lip to keep from throwing up on the pristine white floor of the waiting area. "Sorry sir."

"I don't want your excuses. Follow me." He started walking and Dean's gaze flickered in the direction Sam had been taken.

"But…"

"You questioning me boy?" Angry blue eyes flashed in his direction and Dean swallowed hard.

"No sir."

John's eyes narrowed. And Dean silenced any other protests although his head was still waiting for Sam. At least here, his brother was safe for the time being. As he followed his father's stalking form, he couldn't say the same for himself.

XXXX

Chapter 52

Cabin in the Woods

Dean leaned against the window of the car biting his lower lip between his teeth. His head was spinning and he wanted to avoid throwing up inside the Impala. Not only would that be monumentally embarrassing, but also his father would be seriously pissed. And judging by how his father was treating him so far…that could be hazardous to his continued survival. The car slowed and turned down a gravel road. He tried to see where they were, but the night was so dark that he couldn't make out anything outside the glare of the headlights.

The silence inside the car was painful. Dean's fingers twitched and he clenched them to keep from turning the radio on. He was getting more and more concerned about what he was in for and to be honest, it was starting to scare him. His father hadn't said anything once they were on the road, but the jumping muscle in his jaw was telling a nasty little story of what he wished might happen. And Dean was pretty sure that meant that he'd be going home with more than just a black eye from the forest.

The Impala rolled to a stop in the middle of nowhere and Dean blinked in surprise. He had no idea what to expect and a shiver tripped through his body as John opened the door and climbed out.

"Let's go." He growled at his son and slammed the door without waiting for a reply.

Dean gulped back his own panic and pushed the heavy door open. The crisp air hit him in the face and made the blood in his veins sing with the cold. His father had stopped a few paces from the car. "Dad…"

John turned back and held his hand up. "I don't wanna hear it, Dean. You're going to learn responsibility one way or another."

The temperature had dropped even more since they'd been at the hospital and it had to be barely above freezing now. Dean still wasn't wearing a jacket and his long sleeve Henley was doing little to keep him warm. He dutifully followed his father, but his thoughts kept tripping back to Sam and he lost track of how far they'd walked when John finally stopped in front of an old cabin. Dean shuffled to a halt and looked up. Some of the windows were busted out and it didn't look at all inviting. "What are we doing here, dad?" He asked quietly.

John turned to stare at his eldest son. Something flickered across his face and Dean wondered just what the hell it was…but it was gone so quickly that he dismissed it to the dark. "You'll be meeting an old friend of mine here in the morning. He's gonna train you for a month in the art of tracking in the backwoods…maybe then you won't lose your brother due to your own failings."

The words sliced through Dean and his shoulders slumped at the mention of 'failure'. He wouldn't be seeing Sammy for a month…because he'd failed. He wasn't strong enough; his father was bringing in someone else to train him. "I'll train harder…please don't leave me out here." He hated being alone and more than anything he hated being without family…Sammy. It was the closest Dean would ever come to begging and he felt the bitter acid of it inside his skin. A light breeze picked at his hair and he could smell the changes in the season, they were heading into winter very soon and he had none of the requisite clothing for that.

"No Dean. Kane can train you in ways I can't. And base on what I saw tonight? You need a tougher hand than I have." He turned and popped the trunk on the Impala. He grabbed Dean's duffel bag and dropped it on the dirt. "I'll be back in four weeks…" His blue eyes lifted and Dean swallowed hard at the illuminated hate he saw there. The lights from the car were reflecting just enough for him to know that he had broken something with his father tonight and he was going to suffer for it. He nodded and picked up his bag slowly turning toward the old cabin.

"Yes sir." He mumbled and walked slowly toward the front door. He heard his father climb back into the car and then the crunch of the tires on the gravel as he pulled away leaving Dean in complete darkness.

XXXX

Castiel furrowed his eyebrows at the elder Winchester's idea of enhanced learning. Leaving a child in the forest to learn from a complete stranger didn't seem like much of a positive environment to him. He watched as the boy version of Dean walked slowly toward the cabin. He pushed open the creaky door and slipped inside quickly shutting it behind himself. The angel blinked and was suddenly inside the large single room with Dean.

The kid went about finding the small stack of wood and lighting a fire in the ancient looking fireplace. He set up salt lines in front of all the windows and doors and then shivered as the chill finally started to lift. Dean sniffed as a wayward tear ran down his face; he scrubbed it away in anger. He wasn't angry with his father, he was angry with himself. He'd done this. He turned watery green eyes back on the small fire and scooted closer. It was an unconscious effort not to feel so alone. The pop and crackle of the dry wood at least breaking up the silence in a way that was somewhat soothing.

He pushed forward and then found he couldn't as he saw what the eldest Winchester had tried to keep hidden from his brother all these years.

Castiel was sickened by what he'd observed over the last three and half weeks. He'd seen that bastard that John had the nerve to call a 'friend' do things to Dean that would have broken a lesser man. It had started small with sleep deprivation and lack of food when he failed a training mission and it had escalated to physical punishment…and finally it crossed over into a realm that was unthinkable. The hulking man called Kane was an ex-military sniper and tracker from the Vietnam era…and he had brought some of those tendencies home with him.

Dean had new scars on his body, but it was the ones that could not be seen with the naked eye that made the angel angry. It was during one these 'punishments' that he'd found the answer to his question. Dean was crawling away from the man as he towered over him, his hands wrapped around Dean's ankles along with his clothes. A piece of floorboard pried up and underneath was a shiny metallic object. As Dean swung the board with all his might at the head of Kane, Castiel saw the hiding place of the colt. It was why he was here wading through one of, if the most, painful memories that Dean had.

The board cracked across the man's head and blood burst from a gash as he toppled to the floor. Dean scrambled to pull his clothes back in place and then proceeded to pound the man's head until it was nothing but a pink mess of brains and the white of bone.

Dean pulled away when he realized what he'd done. He never even thought about grabbing the gun he just grabbed his bag of gear and ran from the cabin. It was painful; he was torn up from weeks of mistreatment and lack of nourishment. But it was his mind that was thrashed at the moment. He didn't notice the rumble of a familiar car as he ran down the gravel road and almost smacked into the oncoming hood of the Impala.

Sam jumped from the car and limped to his brother. He stopped a few steps from him when Dean's eyes didn't register anything. "Dean?" He reached out and was shocked when Dean pulled violently away from the comforting touch. "You okay?" His blue-green gaze swept over his brother's haggard appearance and Sam felt the rage boil inside him. His father had done this to Dean. He'd told Sam that Dean wanted to train more on navigating in the backwoods, but looking at the haunted face of his brother, Sam knew better. Their father had sent him out for the past three and half weeks alone.

Dean had lost weight; his face was gaunt and pale. The clothes he was wearing were torn and hanging on his too thin frame. He blinked several times before his green eyes finally focused on Sam. "Sammy?" He whispered.

"Yeah…yeah Dean, it's me." Sam thought that Dean would hug him…he was wrong. The next moment his brother went berserk. He grabbed ahold of Sam and was forcing him back inside the car with strength that he shouldn't posses. "What the hell's gotten into you?" Sam cried as he slid into the back seat.

It took a moment but Dean finally noticed that Bobby was driving. The old hunter looked back at the wild swiveling of Dean's eyes and found his own hunter's instincts kicking in. He put the car in reverse and peeled out as he got the hell out of whatever had put that look on the kids face. Dean wasn't a pansy and he wasn't easily scared, but at the moment the kid looked terrified. "Easy son…we got'cha." He said as he pulled back onto the two lane highway.

"What happened?" Sam pressed as Dean refused to sit back and relax.

The worried tone in his voice finally broke through Dean's fear as nothing else could have. "Nothing…just training and not a lot of sleep. I feel stretched like rubber band ready to break."

It was an unusually honest response from his generally cryptic older brother and it set off all of Sam's internal alarms. "Why don't I believe you?" Sam said quietly.

Dean shrugged. "Because you like to psycho-analyze everything like a woman?" He recognized that he wasn't acting right and that was making Sam worry. So he shoved everything that had happened to him down into the trenches that were his subconscious and put on a brave face. It was a face that he'd worn ever since that day. The real Dean Winchester was still trapped inside that cabin with a ghost. Because that's what happens when you don't deal with things…they haunt you for the rest of your life.

XXXX

After several minutes Sam had gone looking for his brother. He found him unconscious on the floor of Bobby's old bathroom. The angel's palm covering his forehead like he was taking Dean's temperature or something. Castiel's eyelids were shut and he was concentrating. Sam started to interrupt them but something stopped him. He knew from experience that it wasn't a good idea to break the concentration of someone during a spell…and this sure as hell looked like a spell.

He sank to the floor near the door and watched as a myriad of emotions passed over both his brother's and the angel's faces. Once Castiel pulled his hand away he moved his brother to one of the bedrooms he and Dean had shared since they were kids. The angel put his hand back and never said a word as Sam again watched the supernatural being do something to his brother that he couldn't stop. If it kept Dean from giving up his soul to Hell for Sam? Then he would wait an eternity.

Sam watched as his brother's breathing increased and his hands clenched and unclenched in agitation. Whatever he was seeing…it was painful and very emotional. Because, while he couldn't feel exactly what was going on, he could feel the fear and the shame trickling along their link and it was making him sick to his stomach. Something about his brother's past had been so catastrophic that he'd hidden from it for more than ten years. Sam wracked his brain but he couldn't think of anything like that in Dean's history. And he knew his brother better than anyone in the world.

Castiel sat up and pulled his hand back from Dean's damp forehead. He blinked slowly and then sighed. He'd grudgingly respected Dean before this, but now? How had someone that had gone through so much in his young life turned out so…normal? Dean had every right to be a broken spluttering mess, but he wasn't. He was a hero…he'd saved more lives than he'd taken and he felt things so deeply that they were practically part of his DNA.

"Cas…is he…" Sam found that he couldn't finish the sentence. He wanted to ask what the angel had witnessed, but he wasn't sure that he really wanted to know. The things he'd already seen inside of Dean had been traumatic to say the least. But now he knew there was something so black that Dean had hidden it from even him. Was it really his place to ask the angel to 'out' his brother? Sam bit at his lower lip and inhaled slowly. "…Is he gonna be okay?" His worried gaze flickered over to the silent form and then back to Castiel as he stood up and ran his hand through his hair.

"I do not know, Sam. But I believe that he has lived with this for many years, he will continue to do so." He walked around the bed and pulled the curtains back staring into the slowly rising sun.

It wasn't a very good answer. But since the angelic being didn't seem inclined to go on Sam decided not to press. "Uh…did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yeah…feathers ferretted it out." Dean's gravelly voice pulled Sam's eyes back toward the bed. He was sitting up, his eyes still glazed over with blindness. He turned his head in the direction of Castiel's bright light and shook it in an effort to try and clear the memories that were hovering too close to the surface. "The gun was in a cabin in Colorado." He swallowed thickly. "Guess that's our next adventure."

Sam's eyebrows cut down at the tension he heard in his brother's voice. "You okay?"

Dean snorted, his head shaking slightly. "I'll get back to you." He pushed himself up and moved carefully toward the bathroom.

Bobby stepped into the doorway and Sam shook his head. "He okay?"

"I don't know." Sam answered honestly.

"Idgit." Bobby said quietly. It was his way of saying he loved these boys…always had been. "So what now?"

The youngest Winchesters stood up and sighed. "Now? Now we go to Colorado, get a gun, and kill that son of bitch." He never cracked a smile as he passed Bobby and headed toward the kitchen…and the whiskey.

TBC…

Author's Note: So now you all know what Dean has been hiding all these years. He never wanted Sam to know what had happened the night Sam decided to run away…and Dean had paid for that decision. So what happens when Sam learns the truth? How will that impact their relationship, the brothers have a lot of catching up to do. Perhaps Dean will finally be able to put the past behind them…oh and then there's Yellow eyes…and he has something to say about this plan too.

Thanks to everyone that read and reviewed the last chapter...Cecile, LeeMarieJack, gr8read, becca65d, superchiwo, babyreaper, BranchSuper, and several guests and readers. Hope this one meets with your expectation. Whoever the reader is that asked for the new chapter…here you go.

Please Review: This is long and I'd like to know if you're still enjoying the ride.