Sam holds Kristen up in the back seat. She's broken a rib, probably two. The weight of the Daeva and the pressure of the sword hilt on her chest when it landed on them is the culprit. Lilly watches him help her while he favours what must be a huge and flowering bruise on his own back. She drives back toward the motel, glancing at Dean from time to time as he keeps the pressure up on his wound and tries unsuccessfully to reach his father.
"Give me the phone." She snaps. She's tired of this, what the hell is wrong with that man. These men. Dean. Dean is reluctant and hurt and exhausted and she knows she should cut him some slack for the moment, but between the breaking from the plan and nearly getting them all killed she reckons she's entitled to be at the end of her rope.
They wait at a red light and she forces herself to look at him, fixes him with a glare when he hasn't turned over the phone a minute later, "Of all your choices in this moment, surly and stubborn are not the wisest."
He hands her the phone and she's not sure, but she thinks a look of censured puppy crosses his face for just a breath. She hits re-dial and doesn't quite calm herself before speaking.
"Winchester! This is Lilly Rayne. We've just killed three of the Daevas sent for you. I hope that's all of them, but it would be lovely to know for sure. So if you wouldn't mind, drop the black ops bullshit and get in touch with your sons. If we don't hear from you, that you're safe, in the next 12 hours, we'll come for you." She snaps the phone shut and tosses it back in Dean's lap. She curses herself, hating the sarcasm, annoyed by her inability to even pretend to be civil or professional.
They arrive at the motel and wait before they leave the car to make sure the coast is clear. It's 4AM, but this isn't the part of town where decent people can be relied upon to be asleep. This isn't the part of town where decent people could be found. Sam helps Kristen into the motel room first and Lilly bundles Dean in a blanket and prepares to follow them a moment later.
"I'm not a baby. I can do this myself." He begins to protest, winces at each movement.
"Shut up." She continues to swaddle his chest closed to control the bleeding. She continues to let her anger bubble and simmer. Each slight movement to bind the wound, each hiss that escapes Dean's lips, each time he holds his breath in anticipation of another jolt of pain send shots, bolts of fear through her stomach. Which just makes her more angry. She feels like she does when Issy breaks out of her grasp and runs toward traffic. Her heart in her throat; her adrenaline pumps until Issy is safely back in her arms; she lets fly the sharp tongued censures born of the pure fear of disaster Don't ever do that again, Issabelle. The sight of Dean lying on the ground, bleeding, ripped from her the same terror, the same instant response.
Lilly ushers Dean into the bathroom and sits him against the wall straddling the bathtub. Sam trails behind her and she sends him to the other room with bandages and instructions to tape Kristen's ribs. She has no doubt he's more than capable. She turns her attention back to Dean, worried when he starts to pale and sweat that the blood loss will force them to a hospital. She knows no one in the Seattle medical community, there are no Legacy familiars on staff at any hospital here. Explanations get too tricky.
She sits facing him, one foot in the tub, one on the floor and unwraps him from the blanket, takes off his jacket. He winces painfully and jerks away, insists he can do it himself.
I will not lose my temper, I will not lose my temper, I will not lose my temper. She repeats the silent mantra as she sets her first aid kit up on the closed toilet seat beside them. She doesn't look him in the eye, all the easier not to take the bait, busies herself double gloving and begins to cut his black T-shirt off at the hem.
"Hey, I like this shirt." He squirms and winces and squirms some more.
She sticks her fingers through the gapping hole left by the Daevas and simply rips down from there in response.
"Oops." Sarcasm seems the way to go. She cuts the shirt off and discards the fabric to the floor, examines his chest. She soaks the wound with antiseptic and distilled water from a squirt bottle trying to get a better look at the damage. She cleans the wound area and removes an inch long shard of the Daeva's claw, drops it into a clean specimen bottle and sets it aside to look at later. Dean takes in a sharp gulp of air and there are tears in his eyes from the sting of the liquid and her ministration.
"This won't take long." She removes her gloves into the garbage and reaches for a bottle of clear fluid and a syringe. She sees Dean's open fearful eyes follow her movements and would be amused for a second, if her heart weren't still her throat, that the big tough guy is afraid of needles.
"It's fine. I've had worse." His voice is breathy and unconvincing.
"Macho bullshit." She mutters to herself and lays the full syringe on the sterile cloth beside them.
"Sammy can stitch me up, you and Kristen can get out of here if you need to." Dean grits his teeth.
"We're not going anywhere." She responds, flatly. She shifts herself forward, closer to him, their legs fitting together like teeth on a zipper. She re-gloves and lays the suture kit open across their laps and deliberately adopts her surgical persona while she preps. Behaves like this is any other ER trauma. Doesn't spare a thought to the fact she's about to stitch up a six inch long gash across her little brother's chest. The one he got throwing himself into the path of a furious Daeva to save Sam. Grudgingly and silently she concedes she knows how he feels. Grudgingly admits to herself she understands that fear, grudgingly sees that Dean's first and only devotion is to his brother. Sam is first, before anyone else, clearly before himself.
"I'm going to give you a local, it's just Lidocaine." She can't look him in the eye yet.
"I don't need it." He hisses, "Just do it. I can handle it. I can stitch myself up." He repeats for nine hundredth time.
"You don't have to." Her voice is exasperated and pleading, angry and incredulous. Not for the first time Lilly thinks she just does not understand this boy. She stops deliberately and searches his face as though she'll find an explanation there, as though his life will be written in the lines around his eyes or the set of his mouth. And it is, she knows it is. It's just in a language she doesn't speak yet. He looks back at her, and she's not surprised that he's staring her down like this is some sort of contest, something he'll come out on top of, another struggle he needs to take on. So she makes her face blank, unchallenging but unrelenting, and she waits to see the ever so slight concession in his face before she makes several quick injections in the wound and along its border.
The Daeva's claw was knife blade sharp and the surgeon in Lilly is pleased that the wound is straight, clean, will heal easily. The big sister in Lilly, this new part of her, is enraged that anything would dare touch him and she wants to go back to the warehouse and reenact the whole thing so she can kill it twice more and this time before it lays a hand on her brother.
"Two rows of sutures. One is internal to keep the muscle together. Both sets should dissolve on their own, but you can pull whatever's left of the external ones out in about ten days, if the skin is fully healed. I think I've spared you a serious scar." The suturing is easy and she almost smiles when Dean seems impressed by the speed with which she finishes.
"You that good?" She can't tell if Dean is being a jackass or he's trying to sound impressed.
"Yes. I am." She looks at him and still can't read his expression, "I'm sure you know the drill. Keep it dry, change the dressing everyday and I'll leave you some antibiotics in case it starts to get infected." She cuts gauze and tape and patches up the wound.
"I'm sorry." She almost doesn't hear him.
"What?"
"I said I'm sorry. I should have stuck to the plan. I should have done what you said. Kristen wouldn't have gotten hurt, I wouldn't have needed this." he waves vaguely at the bandages.
She sighs and busies herself cleaning up the suture kits and first aid detritus. She doesn't know what to say to him yet. Doesn't know what to do with this anger and fear and frustration. Doesn't trust herself to talk. Their relationship is already so tense, so marginal, so painfully awkward. She swings her leg over the tub walks out of the bathroom.