A/N: All right… this is probably one of the significantly more intense and uncomfortable ones. But honestly really important to the plot and some character arcs going forward. So brace yourself and muscle through if you can.

Skip the trigger warning below if you don't want any hints on what's coming.

TW: Allusions to incest and sexual assault.

Appendix H

Section E

Alex Age 18

Bias

"Okay, again, from the top," said Sam.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," Jenna recited. "Omnis satan…uuh…."

"Satanica."

"Satanica potestas. Omnis incur…." Jenna trailed off.

"Incursio," Sam encouraged.

"Incursio…," Jenna repeated quietly.

But she had become distracted, staring out the window. The scenery had become upsettingly familiar. They were getting close to her house, and for some reason her stomach was starting to twist itself into knots.

"Jenna?" Sam asked.

"They're not happy I won't be home for Christmas," said Jenna.

"Well, they'll just have to deal," said Dean.

"Yeah," said Alex. "If that's how they feel, that's their problem. You don't have to take that on."

"I do, though," replied Jenna, her voice barely audible over the road noise.

Alex gave a sad smile as she looked over at her friend. "I know." She reached over and squeezed Jenna's hand. "I'll come in with you if you want me to."

"Okay," said Jenna.

"We can come, too, if you need more buffer," Sam offered.

"I need to stretch my legs anyway," said Dean.

Jenna felt a surge of emotion, which she quickly quelled. If she let it out now, she wouldn't be able to get through going into her old home and searching through her squirreled away boxes without having a complete breakdown. So she tried to ignore the fact that suddenly she was in a car with three other people, two of them nearly strangers, who were all offering her more emotional support than anyone had given her in her entire life.

"That would be nice, thanks," was all she managed to say.

Her legs shook as she paced up the front walk. She tried to soak in the confidence that radiated off of Alex, who kept close to her side. She imagined Sam and Dean behind her as a kind of impenetrable wall that would stop her from turning tail and sprinting back to the car.

She knocked on the door and felt her heart pound almost painfully against her sternum.

Finally, a man answered, his face permanently set in a mildly grumpy expression.

"Oh, hey, Jenna," he said. "Is this your roommate?"

"Yeah, this is Alex," said Jenna.

"Hi," said Alex, trying to keep her tone neutral. It was hard, as putting a face to the stories Jenna had told her just seemed to make her hate him more. He looked like the most boring middle-aged man she had seen, and somehow that made her angry. Maybe because it gave her the impression he was trying to look normal.

"Who are they?" he asked, nodding to the two men who hung back on the walk.

"I'm Dean, Alex's dad. This is my brother, Sam."

"Uh," the man acknowledged the answer, continuing to assess them with a stare.

"Can I come in and get my stuff?" Jenna asked.

"Oh, right, yes," said Jenna's dad, and let the door swing open, stepping out of the way. "Come in."

Jenna ducked her head slightly and walked past her father into the house. Alex trailed behind her. Sam and Dean wandered inside, too, but didn't pass far beyond the threshold.

"What did you say your name was?" Dean asked.

"Brian," said Jenna's dad, still inspecting them with a disapproving stare.

"Nice to meet you," Sam lied.

"Is Alex's mom in the car?" Brian asked.

Dean's brow furrowed as he regarded the question. "No. Alex's mom passed away when she was a baby."

"I'm sorry," said Brian blandly. "You never remarried?"

Dean pivoted briefly to glance at Sam, who looked just as confused and unsettled by this line of questioning as he was. Dean decided to omit that he had never been married in the first place. "No. No, I didn't."

"Huh," said Brian, his mouth hanging open slightly, lazily. "So it's just you and Alex at your place?"

"Yeah, and Sam," said Dean.

"Your brother lives with you?" said Brian, and finally he showed some hint of emotion, this being a little lift of his eyebrows.

"Yeah," Dean bit back as his confusion turned toward annoyance.

"So it's you and Alex, and her uncle?" continued Brian. "No one else lives with you?"

"We don't have a lot of extended family," replied Dean. "What are you getting at?"

At that moment a woman came in from the next room, moving swiftly. She faltered, however, when she saw Sam and Dean standing in her living room. She looked stern, like she had just eaten something sour and hated it.

"I heard the door. I thought Jenna was here," she said.

"She is," said Brian. "She and Alisha already went downstairs."

"Alex," Sam corrected him.

"Right, Alex," said Brian. "This is my wife, Candice. This is Dean and Sam."

"Nice to meet you," said Candice, leaning forward to shake both their hands with a pincer-like grip.

"These two are the people Jenna will be living with over Christmas," Brian said quietly, turning his whole body toward his wife and away from the brothers.

Dean took the opportunity to mumble to Sam, "What the Hell is going on?"

"I don't know," Sam whispered back. "I think he doesn't like us."

"Yah' think?"

"What, you don't have family over for the holidays?" asked Candice.

"A few friends sometimes," said Sam.

"But all the rest of the time it's just you two and Alex?" said Brian.

"Yeah, we've established that," Dean snapped. "Why is that so important?"

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with my daughter being in a house alone with two grown men," said Brian.

"What?" replied Dean. "What the Hell does—?" Then it hit him what Brian was implying, and he reeled.

Sam realized it, too, and his jaw dropped. "Wow."

Dean recovered from his shock to clarify; "Are you saying you think we would… take advantage of Jenna?" It took everything he had to keep his voice level. He knew if he flew off the handle, that wouldn't necessarily make his case, and right now it was more important that Jenna was protected from the demons than Brian losing a few teeth for being a presumptuous dickhead.

"Well, you have to admit, it is a little odd for two brothers to be living alone with a young woman," Brian spoke matter-of-factly, as if he was completely blind to the threat he was facing. "And, unfortunately, it is not uncommon for uncles to be inappropriate with their nieces."

"Excuse me?!" Sam felt a rage so powerful he could feel a physical burn under the skin of his neck and head. He took an aggressive step forward.

Although Dean was about as incensed as his brother, he heard the fury in Sam's voice and knew he was about to loose it completely, so he turned off his own emotions and switched to the defensive. He put an arm across Sam's chest, gripping a wadded handful of his jacket, and set his feet to keep his brother from attacking Brian.

"I have never laid one wrong hand on Alex! Ever!" Sam roared, his voice so loud and so resonant it rang off the walls. "You don't even know us! You have no right to assume we would do anything like that! I can't even think—," Sam's face contorted as if in pain at the very idea. "It's appalling! What is wrong with you?!"

It was then that Jenna and Alex returned, the latter toting a medium-sized cardboard box.

"What's going on?" she asked, concerned.

"Jenna, you're staying here for break," said Brian firmly.

"What?" Jenna piped.

"Oh, Brian, what does it matter?" said Candice, mildly smacking her husband with the back of her hand. "It's not assault if the little slut wants it."

"Mom," Jenna said meekly as her face flushed a pale pink.

"Oh my God," said Dean, grimacing at the comment. "Is that how you talk about her? She's standing right friggin' there!"

"Where the Hell did this come from?" Alex asked. "Is this what Uncle Sam was yelling about?"

"Sort of." Dean tried to look calm as he addressed his daughter. "Brian here thinks your uncle has been… in his words… inappropriate with you."

"'Inappropriate'?" Alex repeated, taken aback. She looked at Sam, who was currently unable to look at her.

And then they saw her entire demeanor turn to ice. Something had developed in Alex in the last few years. Sam and Dean had noticed it a few times, but more and more often it became clearly recognizable, honed into a precise and exacting weapon. It was a kind of overwhelming quiet—a terrifying quiet and stillness, like being in the eye of a hurricane. And when she turned this intense focus of cold, steely venom on people, they knew their whole lives were about to change.

She turned that gaze on Brian now.

"Why did your mind go to that so quickly, Brian?" she asked him, her voice as smooth as polished glass. "Is that what you do with your nieces?"

And then this man who was so expressionless that it seemed as if he was dead inside suddenly became a living person. He tried to suppress his reaction, that was clear, but a chilling, gripping fear came into his eyes, a terror so violent he looked like he could explode. Just like with Gary, Alex had read him like a flashing neon sign, and called him out on it with absolutely no regard for who learned about his most abhorrent secret.

And suddenly, Jenna remembered a dozen tiny, momentary instances that she had never paid attention to: minute things she had heard or seen at family gatherings that gave her subconscious the gentlest tug, that fraction of a second that an action or a comment seemed odd. All the pieces suddenly fell into place and it was obvious to her what she had been picking up on.

If she hadn't been frozen in terror, her knees would have buckled.

Almost as upsetting was that Candice just looked at the floor, her lips pursed, her expression just a little sheepish. She didn't seem pleased at this horrid truth becoming unveiled, but she was definitely not shocked, as if she had known all along what her husband was doing.

"Okay, Sammy, go walk it off. We'll meet you at the car." Dean pushed his brother out the door, firmly but not unkindly. Sam relented, still shaking with rage, but also gradually deflating.

Dean turned back to Brian, his voice menacingly quiet.

"I'm not going to bother defending my brother to you, because I'll be honest, you ain't worth the breath," he said. "But I will say this. When we heard Jenna was sleeping on the couch in her own home for the entire break, we thought, 'Yeah, she could come stay with us so she could have, you know, a bed.' But after learning what we just did about you… oh, there is no way she's staying here. Sam and Alex and I are absolutely the safest people she can be around right now, and God knows she shouldn't be anywhere near you, you sick son of a bitch."

Then he strode over to Alex and took the box from her. "I've got this; you take care of Jenna."

"Come on; let's go," Alex said gently to her friend beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her toward the door. Jenna offered no resistance; she just walked. Even though her speechless parents stared after her, she never once looked at them. She couldn't.

But she and Alex had to stop their progress as Dean had paused at the threshold. He couldn't hold back the comment.

"And by the way," he snapped at Brian and Candice, "it was Sam who did what my shell shocked ass couldn't, and got copies of my daughter's birth certificate and vax records days after we lost them in the fire that burned Alex's mother and brother alive."

And he left.

…Was that what parents did for their children? They cared that much about pieces of paper? It wasn't just about feeding and housing and making sure they did their homework?

Jenna wasn't aware she was pondering this—wasn't aware of much of anything, for that matter—but it still took some coaxing from Alex to get her to move again.

The two young women came up to the Impala just as Dean was depositing Jenna's box in the trunk. Somehow all that existed for Jenna was that trunk, as if it was the only real thing in the world right now, and she clung to it like a lifeline. The plainest question came to her mind.

"Why is the trunk so shallow?" she asked.

"We'll tell you later," Dean replied, shutting the hatch and heading for the driver's side. "Let's get the Hell out of here."

Alex opened the door for Jenna and eased her to the seat, careful to stop her head from bumping the frame. Then she jogged around to her side and climbed in. As soon as she was inside, she pulled her jacket off and wrapped it around Jenna to prevent her from going hypothermic with shock. Then she scooted up next to her and held on tight.

They took the most direct route out of Chicago they possibly could, humming along toward the countryside. For a long time, they all sat in stunned silence, too upset to discuss what had just happened.

Sam stared out the window, drowning in turmoil. It wasn't simply from the accusation that had been thrown at him, or the assumption that he was a pedophile purely because he was an uncle, or even the heinousness of the crime of which Brian thought him guilty. It was that finally someone had outright told him what he had always feared people presumed when they saw him with Alex. Any time he was being kind or caring with his niece in public, or when people found out he lived with her and his brother, he worried that they would perceive his familial love as a symptom of incest. Even the time when he had taken her to her first OB/GYN appointment, he had been anxious that the other patients thought they were in some May-December romance, but had opted out of making it clear that he was her uncle as somehow that seemed worse.

Sam didn't often put stock in what other people thought, but something about this always concerned him. Perhaps because it was simply so horrible. More likely it was because his entire life had become about keeping her safe, and it terrified him to think there was even a chance that he could have harmed her in any capacity.

About twelve miles outside city limits, he finally broke the silence.

"Alex," he began, and all the power he had bellowed with earlier was gone from his voice, "have I ever done anything that made you uncomfortable, in any way?"

Some people would have heard this question and thought he was looking for confirmation that Brian had been completely in the wrong, that he was a bad person who had lost his mind and Sam was free of fault. But the way he said it, Alex could tell that her uncle was honestly concerned that he had done something that may have hurt her without realizing it.

"No, Uncle Sam," said Alex. She came off her seat and reached over the back of the front bench, wrapping her arms around Sam's neck and resting her cheek on his shoulder. "Not once. Not once in my whole life."

Sam gripped one of her forearms with a hand and hung his head. He let out a ragged breath and allowed a tear to fall as relief washed over him.

A/N: Phew! Hey, look at you! You made it to the other side! I know it wasn't easy, but it'll be worth it in the end, I promise!