The Runt of the Litter

Inverted

Note: Thank you so much for reading, voting, and commenting! I so appreciate it, and you're all so kind!

You guys! I had this one ready ahead of time, so I'm posting at a respectable hour *gasp* This is so big for me.

Next week will be a requested chapter. But this is another one of those where Anna's age changes from section to section. I felt like I hadn't done one in a while, and I had a lot of fun writing this one. The basic premise is that each scene is a time when the relationship between Anna and one/both of her brothers was inverted (hence the title) and she had to take on a protective/care-taker role for them.

In order, Anna is three, seven, eleven, thirteen, sixteen, and nineteen.

Inverted

"Daddy says you got a guy-jantic booboo."

Dean, half sitting up against the headboard of a rickety motel bed, squinted through bloodshot eyes at the three year old on the floor. "What?"

"You got a guy-jantic booboo."

Eyebrows pulled together, one raised. Then there was some clarity. "Gigantic," Dean murmured to himself. "Dad said that?"

"Uh-huh," Anna confirmed. She gripped the edge of the comforter hanging off the bed and leaned forward, tilting her face up to look into Dean's eyes. "Can I sit with you?" she requested sweetly, and there just wasn't any way Dean could say no to that. She hauled herself up onto the bed and crawled over to sit under his arm. "Memmer when I closed my finger in the 'pala?"

Dean leaned his aching head back against the headboard and hummed an affirmative response as he closed his eyes. He wondered when John would get back and found he didn't really care that much.

"You fixed it really good," Anna explained in her signature rushed babble. "An' we watched Spongebob."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face and smirked. He could see where this was going now.

"I tan't fix your booboo," Anna said regretfully. "But we tan watch Spongebob! Do you wanna?"

His arm dropped around her and Dean pulled the kid closer. Noticing the remote control on the nightstand, he reached over to pick it up and hand it to her. Before long, the little TV flicked on, and a sponge in glasses held a jellyfish net on the screen.

"I tan put it closer," Anna offered a few seconds later. She started to move to get down, but Dean tugged her back up to sit next to him. He could just picture the TV falling and crushing her if she tried to push it closer to the bed, and he was in no shape to move anything bigger than Anna.

"It's perfect where it is, Munchkin," he assured.

Anna grinned at his use of the word 'perfect.' For the next ten minutes, she alternated between watching the cartoon on screen and scrutinizing Dean's expression.

"Are you better?" she asked as the commercial break splitting the two episodes began.

Dean smiled tiredly. "Yeah, kiddo. Way better."

()()()

"Does it hurt worse than a splinter?"

Sam smiled around the gauze pressed against his face. "Little bit worse," he answered.

"Stop yakking, or I'm never gonna get the bleeding stopped," Dean muttered, holding the gash on Sam's chin closed with a wad of gauze.

Anna dragged over a chair from the table and stood up on it so she could be at the right level to see Sam's wound. "Do you want me to help?" she offered Dean with a gravely serious look in her eyes.