The Angel, The Hunter and The Nephilim (Destiel x Daughter)

11. Childhood Memories

Leah comes back down again an hour and a half later with a backpack over her shoulder and her luggage, and she puts it down on the floor in the kitchen. Cas is sitting there enjoying his coffee and turns to her when he hears the bag hit the ground.
"All done packing, dad."
Cas smiles. "Well done, Leah. Do you want some tea? It's still about an hour until we leave."
"What? That long?" she asks and sits down by the table opposite Cas.
"Well, we need enough time to get some dinner and then to get you through security and wait for the plane."
"So basically you can't wait to get rid of me."
Cas groans internally, thinking he said something wrong again. "Leah, I didn't-"
"Sorry, dad." She looks down in the table and sighs. "It's just not a good day."
"Yeah, I know what that feels like. You're gonna be just fine again by tonight, though. And I'm sorry if you feel like we haven't had time for you lately, but we just want you safe. Dean can't be stressing it enough. I'm telling you, he feels really guilty about what happened to you."
"He does? I told him that it wasn't his fault," Leah stutters. Cas puts a hand on top of hers just like last time they had this discussion.
"Well, you know your dad," he says. "You're the last person he would see hurt."
"That goes for you too, though. And uncle Sam."
"I know," Cas says and smiles lightly. "But you most of all."
Leah smiles too, a tiny smile. It then gets quiet for a moment, Cas taking a sip of his coffee, none of them talk.
"And if you're wondering where Dean is," Cas says at last, "he's outside working on the Impala."
"Okay." Leah gets up and walks to the doorway but turns around on the spot before she runs back over to her dad and throwing her arms around him like she's done so many times.
Cas smiles widely as he feels the loving arms of his teenage daughter around him, and he remembers the first time she hugged him.

It was really late one night. Cas and Dean were still awake, sitting together in the kitchen of their new house trying to assemble the kitchen table they had gotten earlier in the day. All around them were boxes from furniture and other things they had just bought, unpacked on the floors in every room in the house. It was a mess.
At this time, Dean mostly stressed about getting little Leah to trust him and Cas, getting moved into the house and settling in was second most important. He didn't have anything from his life before, only a couple of pictures, and they didn't really have money so they lived on Dean's credit card scams for a while until he got a real job which he got a week later at the garage.
The house was already old, and they got it for a small price since the previous owners just wanted to get rid of it. As the two men sat on the floor working on the furniture, they heard the creaking in the floorboards, a sound that they would hear every day for years to come.
Both of them looked up at the doorway to see a little child stand there, clinging to her chest a teddy bear Dean had gotten her at the supermarket a few days earlier.
"Hey, kiddo, why aren't you asleep?" Dean asked.
"I had a nightmare," she said, her voice shaking. She had already started tearing up.
Dean, who had been on his knees unpacking, got back up on his feet and walked over to his daughter, lifting her up into his strong arms. He held her close for a moment. "What happened in the nightmare?" he asked softly.
"There was a monster. It hurt me," she cried. Dean smiled sorrily to her and then at Cas. It couldn't have been worse that anything he had ever hunted but she was scared, so that was enough for him. Leah put her small arms around him, hugging him closely.
"The monsters aren't ever gonna hurt you again, sweetheart. You know how I know? Because daddy's gonna fight away all your monsters so you can sleep peacefully. Okay?" he asked. It was kinda sad. When Sam was her age, he thought there was a monster living in his closet, so John gave him a gun. Dean knew from experience that this was not the way to go. All he wanted was for his child to have a normal childhood, a normal life, and he wasn't gonna slip and tell her that the monsters were, in fact, real.
She nodded and sniffled, wiping her face with the back of her hand and Dean smiled slightly, experiencing the feeling that he once again had a little person to take care of, someone that needed him, and he had forgotten how much he loved that feeling.
"Okay. Good, kiddo. Now let's get you back to bed. Can you say goodnight to Cas?" he asked, and Leah started squirming out of his arms and he put her back down. She immediately ran over to Castiel who sent her a little smile, and she threw her arms around him, hugging him like he was her teddy bear.
Dean's heart just melted for every second as he watched his little, brave daughter hug a man she hadn't fully developed a relationship to; the man her daddy loved.
She smiled at Cas after she broke the hug and ran right back over to Dean again and he picked her back up into his arms.
"Good night, Cas," Dean said on Leah's behalf, and not a second later, Leah waved at Cas and said, "good night, dad."