Author Note: Edited 6/06/17. Made some tweaks to ensure the fic stays as canon as possible.
Triage
Jody lifts her head to give the two of them an appraising once-over, only to immediately narrow her eyes at Dean. She drops the ice pack from her bruised cheek and hands it off to Alex without looking at her, shoves up to her feet. She pales and wavers once there, presses her fingertips to the arm of the chair.
"Come here," she says, with more strength in her voice than she seems to have in her body. "Let's take a look at that leg."
Dean winces from the mere mention of his leg, which looks gross and feels even worse, and shifts his weight despite himself. "Nah," he counters. His gaze darts to his mother, and she returns the look with one of her own, something cold and indifferent that cuts right through him. "It's not so – "
Sam jabs him between the shoulder blades, and Jody raises her eyebrows and orders, "Sit. Now."
Dean rolls his eyes, but doesn't have enough gas in the tank to take them both on. He summons the energy to propel his battered body forward, and only succeeds in propelling his brother into making a grab for his elbow. Dean shakes him away but he's already unsteady, and the harsh motion throws him even further off-balance, causes him to put more weight on his bum leg than is currently appreciated. He sucks in a pained breath and hops sideways until he regains his footing, and by that point neither Sam nor Jody seems inclined to give him much choice in the matter. They each take an arm, and Alex backs out of the way, clearing a path.
If it was this injury on any one of them, Dean knows it'd be his priority, and he would be acting the same way. But he's not at all comfortable with the priority being him. Not with his friends and family in danger and his mom in the next room, sitting at the table like she's waiting for dinner to be served, but with her arms bound and her mind screwed to hell. There's no time for this now; he can't just stop.
He waves off the help and glances again in her direction, but once he's gingerly lowered himself to the chair he closes his eyes and lets out a slow, relieved breath. With the weight off his leg and room to stretch out, Dean's found a new level of appreciation for sitting. Sitting is AWESOME.
Eyes trained on the soaked-through wrapping around his knee, Jody squeezes Dean's shoulder once, turns her attention to Sam. "What the hell happened to you boys?"
Sam crosses his arms, fidgets. "Sort of a long story, but, uh, Clifnotes version? He blew a hole through the bunker. With a grenade launcher."
"It was awesome." Dean's grin quickly fades as Alex starts to pick at the hasty, makeshift bandage. He gags, turns it into a cough. "Saved your ass."
"Yeah, you did." Sam frowns, meets Jody's eyes and jerks his chin pointedly.
She nods. "Alex, honey?"
"Yeah, I got it." The girl's fingers are already stained red from handling the damp bandage, fabric soaked through with hours' worth of steady bleeding.
Sam and Jody move to the corner of the room and have a quick, quiet conference in which Dean suspects he's the topic of conversation. He kneads at the stiff muscles above his knee and watches the hushed exchange with a suspicious eye. He can't make out what they're saying, but it's gotta be better than staring at his mom, and much better than watching Alex pretend there's anything to be done with the wound.
She seems to have aged ten years since he saw her last. The moody teen is gone; she's brisk, efficient, and mature. But the real change is in the eyes. Any lingering part of Alex that was still a carefree child has been tamped out by the darkness she's seen. That's how it goes, this side of the life, and it goes fast. She's turning it into something useful, though, he remembers. Nursing school. Helping people, without the need for a weapons compartment in the trunk of her car.
Alex hisses in sympathy as she unwinds another layer. "Does it hurt?"
Dean snorts humorlessly, lets that be his answer. Truth be told, it doesn't hurt that much, not in comparison to the awkward, cramped agony of five hours in the Impala, made worse by those pathetic looks Sam shot him if Dean so much as breathed loudly. Little brother's concern had reached suffocating levels years ago, but he's been nearly insufferable since that whole Mark-of-Cain-stabbed-to-death-reborn-a-demon thing. He'd dug the kit out of the trunk before they shagged ass for Sioux Falls, tossed it onto the bench and rooted through one-handed at regular intervals to drop various pills into Dean's lap, always with a worried look and a terse "take these."
Exhausted, stressed and HURTING – a dozen additional aches his brother doesn't know or need to know about – Dean hadn't put up much of a fight, curled his lip but wordlessly knocked back every palmful. Which might explain the pathetic puppy eyes he's getting from Sam right now.
There's a cool, heavy, and disconcerting numbness spreading through his leg, and he knows that's probably not good, in a serious way. Knows that probably means something between his shredded nerve endings and his brain isn't quite working the way it's meant to.
He digs his fingers once more into his thigh, works his jaw. "You know what you're doing?"
"Well enough. I've gotten sort of good at this." This meaning general cleaning and care – certainly not THIS – and with a glance at Jody that speaks volumes to Dean.
"Here."
He must've zoned out for a minute, because there's suddenly a glass in his face, filled to the brim with something that looks gloriously like whiskey, and a somewhat blurry, serious-faced Jody hovering above.
"Drink this."
"Yes, ma'am." Dean gratefully accepts the glass, swallows a mouthful as Alex sets the bloody pile aside and starts to cut his jeans leg from the hem. The torn edges of the denim are dark and tacky, and catch on the gory disaster of his knee. He grunts and flinches, and Alex pales as she tears the fabric free of his skin.
She purses her lips and makes a face that reminds Dean an awful lot of Sammy and those early years. The stitches after the werewolf in Biloxi, or the first time he had to shove Dean's shoulder back into place without Dad there. That young, determined face that says this is fine, when everyone involved knows otherwise.
That little boy is long gone, but Sam's still keeping a very deliberate distance across the room, doing his best to pretend he can ignore the parade of elephants in the room. The bloody, mangled, possibly irreparable mess of Dean's knee, and their brainwashed, dangerous, possibly irreparable mother. The kid's always had a hard time looking the truth in the eye when it's plopped down in front of him.
Dean's just going to have to do it for him, because he has a feeling he might need Sammy to step up here, soon.
Alex takes a sledgehammer to his musings, says "this'll be fine" like she's reading her next line from a script.
When everyone involved knows otherwise.
Sam can pretend all he wants, but Dean knows his brother gets it. He looks down at the raw, weeping flesh of his own ruined knee and he gets it, too. There's nothing to stitch, and not much to be done with some hurried living room triage. Pretty much the best he can hope for is that the messy wound isn't already infected, from the shoddy bandaging and delayed care.
Speaking of things that are being delayed…Dean's gaze slides sideways once more to where his mother is restrained in the next room.
She catches his eyes, ceases her squirming attempts to free herself. She's looking right at him, but isn't seeing him – not him – and that's a realization that hurts in deeper, harder to reach places than the sharp pains suddenly tearing through his leg.
Alex presses against his wound and Dean curses and flinches violently, brings everyone a step closer to his chair.
Everyone except his mother, who smirks.
"How you doing, Dean?" she asks, brightly and callously. Enjoying his pain.
This isn't the shaken, vulnerable woman who'd carefully examined Dean's bloody hand after that British bitch pulled out brass knuckles. Her eyes are wide, crazed and blood-thirsty. She wants to kill them all. She's MEANT to kill them all.
Dean holds up his free hand in an attempt to keep his brother at a safe, non-suffocating distance, and mostly succeeds. "I'm good," he lies through clenched teeth. Forget anything he may have thought earlier; his leg hurts plenty.
Alex doesn't buy it, clearly, but she doesn't push it, either. She stays still, waiting for his permission to continue.
Dean takes a breath, clears his throat. "Sam."
His brother steps forward with wide, childlike eyes, stops before he comes within arm's reach. "Yeah?"
"Why don't you go out to the car? Bring in our, uh, guest of honor."
Sam's eyebrows jump together. "Right." Even so, he hesitates, knowing his big brother well enough to suspect ulterior motives.
Dean waits until he hears the front door close, then nods down at Alex. "It's okay."
He's not an idiot. If there was much to be done, the experienced hunters wouldn't have the kid cleaning him up, nursing school or no. This is a permanent sort of injury. The kind that sidelines smarter hunters and leaves the proud, stupid ones dead. Without a little angelic intervention of the insta-heal variety, his leg might never be the same again.
But they don't know where Cas is, or whose side he'll be on when they find him.
"I could…I mean, I don't know if I can – "
"It's okay, Alex," he repeats, adds a tight smile and tries to make it sound like he means it. "Just do what you can." Dean drains most of the glass and averts his gaze as she starts in with the antiseptic, searching out a distraction. His eyes fall on the bloodstained carpet, and his heart tightens. "Jody?"
"Yeah," she answers softly, stepping forward.
"What, uh, what happened here?"
She obliges, but her voice becomes a dull hum of background noise until a flare of pain brings his senses crashing back.
"…clocked me out of the blue, I thought she was a demon. I had no idea brainwashing could be so thorough."
Join the club. "Jody…" Dean can't begin to know where to go from there. "I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault."
Maybe not, but it's his responsibility to fix this. His lead to take. Or, it's supposed to be.
Another rocket of agony rips through his knee and he grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut.
Can't do much leading from the bench.
Once I was in, I just followed. 'Cause it was easy. Easier.
Easier than what?
Easier than leading.
The front door opens, and Dean does his best to push the pain down and straighten in his seat. Sorry, Sammy.
Timing's a bitch, and it's starting to look like it might be little brother's turn at the helm.