When cannibal guy asked him if he knew what it was like to starve, for just the smallest moment here, an old memory returned, and Dean said 'yeah' with more feeling than he'd intended. Even in that tiniest of flashbacks he could feel his gut shrinking, his stomach collapsing into his backbone, and he hoped Sam hadn't noticed.

It was one of those things that Sam would hopefully have pushed to the back of his mind, to that place where he kept everything that ever happened before his eighteenth birthday in order to deny it all.

Sam, however, wasn't as dumb or selective as Dean sometimes took him for. He remembered very well the time that Dean got trapped, or more to the point, he recalled when Dean got out. Recalled his father begging his brother to eat something, first of all when Dean couldn't eat, and then when he wouldn't.

And he sure didn't miss the way his brother acknowledged the rugaru's question with such depth of feeling.

Dean was nineteen when he fell down the well.

At least that's what John told Sammy to tell the emergency services. In truth, they'd taken on a poltergeist and won, but only after the thing had thrown Dean down the well along with half the walling around it.

With the poltergeist despatched, John and Sam had called Dean's name hoping and praying for an answer that never came. The bricks that had made up some of the wall were heaped up at the bottom with no sign of Dean, and the only thing they could find to be thankful for was the fact that the well was dry.

The frame where the bucket had hung from was long rotted away and there was nowhere to knot a rope to, so John was forced, against his nature, to keep company with a local deputy and wait for the fire service to arrive. A boy down a well didn't take priority when houses were burning down, so it was pitch dark by the time they arrived, soot smudged and tired.

They worked through the night setting up an a-frame with a winch, hauling up rubble. Several times they sent a man down, but he could find no sign of the boy in the well. As dawn broke, the last of the rubble was cleared away, and there was still no sign.

On questioning, neither Sam nor John had actually seen Dean fall down the well per se, they'd just heard his yell which sounded like it had gone down the well, and seen the wall falling in.

General consensus was that the boy had taken off, and it was only the pure devastation on John's face along with Sam's insistent denial that stopped the deputy from arresting them for wasting good men's time. The boy was nineteen, so there wasn't any call to mount a search and rescue, and the deputy wasn't inclined to call his men out anytime soon.

So John and Sam scoured the area until they dropped, exhausted into bed. And then they got up and did it again. There was never any sign, never any answer to his name, but neither father nor son would give up.

Three days after the poltergeist the deputy told them to give up, that Dean was probably in Vegas by now. After John almost took his head off the deputy didn't come near them again.

Seven days afterwards, Pastor Jim came by, and Sam never hated his father more than he did that day as he was made to go with the Pastor away somewhere else. Somewhere not there. Because the likelihood of finding Dean alive and well had long gone by, and Sam was too young to realise that John was just trying to protect the one son he still had left.

Ten days afterwards, Bobby Singer came by and helped John search all the ground that had already been searched a hundred times over. That evening, while John pored over maps and blueprints that were already seared into brain trying to find something he'd missed, Bobby stood by the well with a beer in his hand.

He stared at the well for a long time. And then he moved around to the broken part and stared at the well for another long time. When he was done with that, he moved around to the secure side and sat on the wall looking down into it for a long time too.

When everything else has been eliminated, what remains must be the answer, so someone said once, and Bobby scratched his head underneath his ball cap and thought about that while he finished his beer.

Day eleven involved much begging and scamming to get hold of another a-frame and winch. But by the afternoon they were set up. Bobby ran interference as John's temper escalated right along with his straw-grasping hope, and it took a full body block to take Winchester down before the idiot threw himself down the well without roping himself up properly.

In the end, after much persuasion that ended up with John punching Bobby out, it was John that roped up and Bobby that let him down the well.

The adrenaline sang through John as the grating at the bottom of the well wall came into sight. The fire guy had said he'd checked it and nothing was in there, but when you know your boy, know he wouldn't have left, not least because they'd been in the middle of a hunt, when you know he got thrown down this well, when you've searched and searched and there isn't anywhere else he could be. Then, as Bobby said last night, he's got to be here somewhere.

The grate in the wall was where the water came in years ago, when the well was still a well. It filtered out leaves and debris, and near the bottom there were even rusted rungs in the wall, all that remained of the ladder that was used to clear the grate out.

John was positively shaking by the time he reached the grate, hope threatening to burst him open, tears leaking from his eyes even if he wouldn't acknowledge them.

As the fireman had said though, the grate was clear. There was no body in there. There was no body at the bottom of the well, and nowhere the body could go. The hope dissolved quick smart into despair, and John shook, breath paralysed as he didn't cry. His face screwed up in pain, tears dripped down his face, and when he finally drew breath it was ragged and echoed around the walls, but he did not cry.

John's breath eventually settled and, with nothing he could call a rag on him, he blew snot and hawked phlegm into the thin layer of sludge that lay at the bottom of the well. He was about to call Bobby to get him back up when he heard something that did sound like crying and it wasn't him.

He held his breath and listened intently, trying to tune out the sound distant sound of water. And there it was again. Far away, soft crying or maybe a whimper. He couldn't recognise it as his boy's voice, but it was something or someone in pain. It didn't matter if it was physical or emotional or what the hell ever, someone needed saving, and if there was something that John could do in this time of feeling useless, it was save people.

And if there was any justice in this world then it would be his son he was saving.

Spelunking was the order of day twelve. With brute force, John had gotten the grate to swing open and just a couple of feet beyond, the floor disappeared. Bobby had convinced John that getting some experts in would prevent would otherwise end up being two dead Winchesters and a dead Singer and Bobby surely didn't want to end up in that particular pear tree.

A little sweet talking by Bobby and the deputy understood what worry for a child will do to a man, and it turned out that he was a long time member of the local pot-holing club. So with Bobby manning the winch, John roped between two pot-holers who also doubled as the local search and rescue.

It was clear that the tunnel that had once brought water to the well, ran above another tunnel, and at some point, the supplying tunnel's floor had collapsed, which explained the well being dry. The collapse went back further into the dark than eyes or torch beams could see, but water could be heard falling somewhere up ahead.

Down below, rivulets ran from under rubble down the floor and around the curled figure of what could only be John's eldest son, draining off through small cracks around the outside of the well shaft. John tried to push forward, calling out Dean's name, but there was no response. And if John had been in any state to think rationally, he would have realised that twelve days in this hole would make anyone unresponsive or unconscious.

As his two companions pulled him away to make room for rescue kit, John could only imagine how long his boy must have screamed for help, but down here, he might as well have been in a sound proofed room. He must have thought quick when he hit the bottom of the well, seen the grate was open and rolled inside, getting out of the way of the falling bricks. It must have been a shock to roll right into another hole.

The deputy threatened to knock John out if he didn't get out of the well, and it was only after the deputy had explained to him, somewhat forcefully that they couldn't rescue his son if he didn't get his ass out of the way .

Bobby got John to help him with the winch. Not that he needed it, because it was electric, but it gave the younger man something to do other than pace a ditch into the ground.

When the stretcher finally came up the well, Bobby held his breath as John ran for it. No one had mentioned that Dean was probably dead, but it was a very real possibility.

Or maybe not. People didn't put oxygen on dead people usually.

When the stretcher was on the ground, and the tyres of the ambulance could be heard coming round, John dropped to his knees. Dean was filthy, sick and frail, but his eyes were looking at him, and his mouth was moving, trying to speak with a voice that had long gone, lower lip quivering as tears ran from his eyes into his hair.

At the hospital, it was evident that Dean was incredibly lucky, hard headed and hard boned. Breaks to arm, leg and rib were clean and had started healing on their own and the concussion he had no doubt suffered had been and gone. Even the scraped hands and head to toe bruising looked horribly but had actually passed the worst, with swelling going down rapidly. Landing in a small stream had given him water, and it was only damp in his lungs and being starved that made him sick now.

John called Jim to pass the news onto Sammy. He couldn't deal with his youngest right now and was secretly glad that he didn't come to the phone. The last words Sammy had said was that he hated his dad, but John had every faith that bringing his brother back would help ease his way back into Sammy's good books. Maybe.

A few days and many bags of fluids, antibiotics and nutrients, and Dean was complaining, wanting to go home. The doctor wouldn't let him until he'd eaten a bowl of pudding on his own, and there began a battle of wills; Dean against the rest of the world. With abrupt mood swings from angry to hysterical, from happy to be alive to depressed that he'd been so useless, pudding ended up on the floor, wall and ceiling. John begged him to eat, and hysterical, Dean told him he couldn't. He wasn't hungry and just couldn't.

The doctor said it was normal, that his stomach had shrunk too much, but he had to train it to grow back to its normal size. Just a little bit at a time. And he couldn't go home until he did.

So Dean hid pudding in his bed-pan, in his cupboard, even in a really convenient slot at the back of something that beeped a lot. Until it went pop and didn't beep anymore. But each time the really hot but really nasty nurse didn't believe him and hunted around until she found where he'd hidden it. John continued to beg, and Dean deflected, trying to convince his dad that the nurse was a succubus.

And then John yelled at him, and Dean shut up. John yelled about how worried he'd been, how out of his mind, how he'd had to send Sammy away before they found Dean's decomposing body, how Sammy hated him for it. He yelled some more about how only an idiot would fight injury, isolation and starvation only to die because he wouldn't eat a measly little pot of pudding. And about how the fire service, the deputy and his pot-holing friends, not to mention himself and Bobby and maybe Sam, had all put their lives on the line trying to find him, to rescue him. And how every pudding that went AWOL or ended up on the floor or on someone's head was an insult to their bravery, and he ordered Dean to shut and eat up.

Stunned, Dean ate the whole pot and promptly threw up.

Waking up some time after the nauseating attempt at pudding, Dean watched his father sitting with his head in his hands. How could he explain what a huge big deal food was?

They all seemed to think he was being an ass for the sake of it, but he wasn't. When he was in that hole, he'd had no idea of the passage of time. Only that he'd gotten hungry. Then he'd filled his belly with water and that had made the hunger go away for a while before it came back with vengeance.

Water only did so much. Like keeping him alive, for sure, but eventually the stomach grumblings had begun to hurt. Really hurt. He'd tried to keep working at the rubble that blocked the tunnel. Admittedly he didn't try too hard because he didn't know of it was damming the water. But he'd done it because it had kept him moving. But his energy ran out, and his stomach hurt. And then it didn't anymore and he'd kind of realised that he wasn't going to get anything to eat for the foreseeable future. His muscles had started to ache, and his skin hurt and somewhere in there he'd kind of had to accept that food wasn't in his future at all.

So he'd stopped thinking about food, and simply drunk water all the time, finding it disturbingly easy to forget that he even needed food. His stomach just seemed to give up. His throat told him when he needed water, which was pretty much all the time, until the last day or so, when thirst didn't register anymore.

But, point was, he couldn't get his mind out of that hole and back into the real world. He couldn't seem to get himself to grasp the fact that he needed food. When he tried to think about it, tried to imagine eating something, even drinking something that wasn't water, his stomach screwed itself up and ran for the hills.

And being nauseous was way worse than not eating. And maybe he was hallucinating his rescue anyway.

He doctor talked about feeding tubes, but seemed reluctant to go down that road, restating the fact that Dean was perfectly capable of feeding himself and has the shrink been around yet?

The next attempt went somewhat better, mostly because he ate two spoonfuls, which equated to almost half the pot and then refused the rest. And instead of getting yelled at, everyone told him what a good boy he was and didn't that just make him feel like a dog or something.

But, they kept bringing pots, and eventually he ate a whole one. He felt like he had rocks in his stomach, and it made him feel exhausted, but he managed to fit in a demand to leave before he fell asleep.

Back in the hole, his fed stomach was happy, but that lasted only until the bloated feeling went away and the hunger pains came back, and he just knew he shouldn't have caved because getting used to not eating would hurt. Again.

When he woke up, the rocks had gone, and his stomach was tentatively trying out a tiny rumble. The doctor was standing there with another pot of pudding demanding he eat it. Which Dean thought was mightily unfair since he'd already accomplished that. But apparently the doc wanted to see for himself.

With a scowl and inexplicable tears burning at the back of his eyes, Dean ate the pudding, and it sat, heavy, making him feel fat as an elephant, and he dreaded going back to the hole and having to suffer through the hunger again.

But the doctor said he could leave. And that was worth all the discomfort and stupid leaking eyeballs in the world.

John helped Dean into the car, trying hard not to think how thin he was. The doctor was concerned about letting his boy go, and armed John with diet sheets, instructions and an order to bring him back for checks and his casts removed.

That wasn't going to happen because they were headed for Jim's place, and a local, hunter quack would take care of Dean from here on in. Insurance was only good for so long, after all. What the doc was most concerned about though, was the fact that the shrink hadn't seen Dean. That was partly hospital admin cock up and part Dean being asleep when she finally did poke her head round the door.

Winchesters didn't need shrinks anyway; they were overpaid agony aunts for professional victims in his opinion.

Dean slept most of the way to Jim's, which would have worried John, but the doc said that he would mostly sleep until his appetite levels went back up just because if the truck ain't got gas, it just ain't going nowhere. Or something.

Jim answered the door with a smile, while Sam lurked, mutinous, in the background. John told them that Dean was in the car, and Sam's face lit right up as he barrelled past, yanking that car door open.

There was some banter between the boys that John didn't catch, and Jim's hand caught his shoulder squeezing gently. He said that Sam was worried. He'd worried about Dean, and he'd worried about his dad, even if he'd never tell his dad that.

Sam helped his brother into the room Pastor Jim had set up. It was tiny, but had its own bathroom, so Dean didn't need a lot of energy to take care of himself.

Jim had told him that Dean was sick, but this was a different kind of sick to what the fifteen year old had experienced before.

When Dean was settled in the bed, Dad came in with a greyish white pudding for Dean to eat, but Dean had already fallen asleep. He left it on the side and told Sam to make Dean have it when he woke up.

At it happened the drive must have been exhausting, because Dean didn't wake up until the next morning. A little disoriented, Sam had to remind him he was at Jim's place.

Things went back downhill after that. Having gotten out of the hospital, Dean was back to not eating, and somewhat belatedly John recognised that his eldest had been faking.

He'd been holding it together, pretending that everything was okay with the sole intention of getting out of the one place where they could have made everything actually okay. As he held his son through the aftermath of another nightmare, it hit him that Dean had never actually left that hole. He was still there, and the not eating was a survival mechanism.

It took Sam a while to work out what was going on. He kept pestering Pastor Jim for answers, because he couldn't ask Dean, because Dean was either out cold or out of his head most of the time.

And Dad was so wrapped up in trying to fix Dean that there was no talking to him, not even Pastor Jim could talk to him.

Sam had never seen his dad beg before. Or cry.

And Sam had never felt so alone. He was aware that he was sheltered from a lot by both dad and Dean, but he mostly resented it because it excluded him. He was almost an adult, and he was supposed to be a part of this family even if it didn't feel like it a lot of the time. He couldn't help but wonder if his dad would be so torn up if it was him that was sick and not Dean.

Pastor Jim kept saying that he should go talk to his dad and brother, but the priest didn't seem to understand that there was no room for him.

During one particularly bad episode that left Dean crying and shaking, and John begging him to come back to him, Sam couldn't stay out in the cold and slid inside, carefully climbing onto the bed.

He crawled slowly and carefully up the bed, and manoeuvred himself to put his arms around Dean too. When dad shifted to include Sammy in his embrace, Sam felt a part of the family.

Dean seemed to sleep better when Sam and John were there, seemed to need the reassurance that he wasn't alone, that he wasn't still back in that hole. And when Sam held out a cup of that greyish white gloop and put on his best glare, he did his best to eat it.

When he'd eaten enough of the gloop that that it didn't feel like rocks anymore, he had just enough strength to get to the bathroom and back, and he started on his next battle of wills.

And that was a battle of wills that John was only too happy to engage his son in, because there was no way in hell he was letting Dean have a cheeseburger no matter how much his boy sulked.

The recovery from that period wasn't something that Dean was very proud of. He'd put everyone around him through hell, and in the end, his father had found him a therapist. The sessions had been intense and had helped, but once he no longer needed them, he swore therapists for life. The ten years since then he'd spent denying it had ever happened.

Sam never forgot it either, and while he ribbed his brother mercilessly – after all, Dean had always been a slob – he never begrudged Dean the quantity of food he managed to put away, and he never would.

FINIS