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

12. Sending You Away

After hugging Cas, Leah walks out the doorway and into the hallway where she puts on her shoes and walks into the rainy noon, across the driveway and up to the Impala where Dean is leaning over the engine he's always working on. Leah walks straight over to him and puts her arms around him, not at all minding that her father has spots of oil all over his clothes. He leans back up, looking over his shoulder.
"Leah?" he says, then turns around and puts his arms around her. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"I'm sorry," she mumbles into his dark blue coverall he always uses when he's working.
"Sorry? Sorry for what?" he asks and rubs her back lightly.
"Attitude. Sorry for my attitude towards you and dad at breakfast."
"Ah. Well, I forgave you once you apologized to Cas. Just... please be nice to Cas."
There's silence while they hug each other, and then Leah whispers, "it wasn't your fault."
"Kid, I don't understand you when you're whispering and mumbling like that," Dean says and takes a step back, leaning against the hood of the car, looking at her.
"It wasn't your fault," Leah repeats, and it almost hurts saying it because now she's the one bringing it up when she doesn't really wanna talk about it herself. She stares down at the ground.
"What wasn't my fault?" he asks and wipes the oil off his hands on the cloth beside him.
"What Michael did to me. That wasn't your fault."
Dean crosses his arms, sending his daughter one of his looks. "What brought this up?"
"I talked to dad, and he said you blame yourself for what happened to me."
"I know that Michael really is to blame here, but I was supposed to be looking out for you. I'm your dad and my job has always been to keep you safe."
"But I was the one who was with him for seven months!"
"And I let you date him for seven months, even though I thought you were too young to have a boyfriend."
Leah sighs deeply. Dean is extremely stubborn when it comes to something about her. She knows he only wants what's best for her, but sometimes it's just so hard to deal with. She at least inherited his headstrong attitude, and that's what made Dean so convinced she was his daughter in the first place.
"Can I ask you something, kiddo?" Dean asks, his voice suddenly calm and quiet.
She nods and he uncrosses his arms.
"When... when did it happen?"

It's been a month since they pulled her out of school, and she gives it a thought as Dean lets his arms slide down to his sides, holding that dirty cloth because he doesn't know what to do with his hands. She thinks to herself, the day after she hurt herself, they pulled her out of school, so it's been two months since...
"The day the bathroom door broke down," she lies.
Dean flinches whenever someone mentions Leah bleeding or hurting herself, so whenever they discuss the day she locked herself in the bathroom and slit her wrist, they use the term 'the day the bathroom door broke down'.
He crosses his arms again, shaking his head.
"No, I don't believe you. I noticed you changed long before that."
"Dad," she exclaims. "I just came out here to try to tell you that it wasn't your fault, I didn't wanna rip this up again!"
"Well, what if I told you I have been pondering on this question for weeks and whenever I look at you I break a little inside because I know what happened and I can't help you? I promise, I won't get mad if you tell me!"
"You always promise you won't get mad if I tell you something awful, and every time you get furious," she cries at him.
"Well, now I'm already mad, so you might as well tell me," he yells in frustration.
Leah lowers her voice again like she did when she came out to talk to him, and she stares back down at the ground. "Two months."
"Please talk so I can hear you."
"Two months," she shouts before her voice breaks and her tears start running. "Okay? I was raped a month before I tried to kill myself!"
Dean cringes visibly when he hears that last part. It hurts so bad knowing his only child went through this awful trauma. Then it sinks in, what she said. Two months? She suffered on her own for a month until she decided to end it all because she stopped being able to deal with it. Two months since some idiot took his daughter's innocence away, and she never told him, and neither him nor Cas had any clue, except for noticing that she'd become quiet and kept to herself.
Dean has a hard time figuring out what he should do after hearing this confession. All he really wants in this moment is for her to be a child again, so he can pick her up and hold her in his arms and tell her she'll be alright, he'll fight for her, he'll fight away all her monsters and everything that's scary or painful so she can feel safe. But this isn't something he can stop, nothing he can soothe. This nightmare is real and it hurts every member of their tiny family, and most of all his child, his little baby girl, who he promised himself he wouldn't ever screw up. She wasn't supposed to ever feel hurt or sad. And he let her down.
"Leah," he says. He drops the dirty cloth and reaches out his arms for her.
"I don't wanna talk about this anymore, I'm going back inside. I need to look over everything I packed to see if I haven't forgotten anything that I'll need before you send me away," she cries and turns right around, walking through the rain that's soaked her clothes in the past ten minutes, and Dean shakes his head, starting to walk after her.
"No, no, no, Leah," he says. "Leah, come back, please!"
She turns around on the heel. "What?" she screams.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Leah, I have no idea what to say, and do you even understand how much that hurts me? I was the one person who should never have let you down, and I failed you and you won't even begin to understand half of it."
Now she's the one that doesn't know what to say. When she looks up at Dean she can see in his eyes that he's full of hurt and Leah herself is shaking, trying to wipe away the tears on her face.
"Come here, kid," he says and walks over to her, pulling her in as tightly as he can without breaking her.
"Shh," Dean whispers into her hair. "Jesus fucking Christ, Leah, you should have told me, I should have asked earlier, I should have known anyway because I saw something change in you, but I didn't know what to do, and I'm so fucking sorry. I don't have any clue at all as to why you would hide this for so long, suffer with all this inside and not letting me and Cas know. Things would have been so much easier if you did tell us."
"Well, you should know that I hate conflict."
"I know you do, kiddo," Dean says and rubs her back. "I know you do. And I hate doing this to you, turning it all around. I know you're hurting, and it sucks, because I can't change what happened."
"I'm sorry," she replies, her voice breaks again and she sobs down in his shoulder, and she can feel his whole posture change, he gets weaker, his shoulders aren't strong anymore, his arms don't hold her as tightly as they did just before she started crying. His heart is breaking and his entire body is affected.
"No, kiddo. You're saying sorry and none of this is your fault," he whispers, he desperately wants to tell her everything is gonna be okay but he can't because he can't lie to her anymore, he doesn't know for sure if it's gonna be okay. He just shushes to her, and that usually helps. It used to help to tell her it was gonna be okay, but she'd only scream at him, telling him he couldn't promise her that. And he knows he can't. Because if he couldn't protect her from this, then what do his promises mean anymore?
"I should have told you," she sobs, "I should have told you before and maybe the day of the broken door never would have happened. Maybe I wouldn't have been so desperate to give up on life if it had never happened, maybe I would have been happier, but, you know, we couldn't have known, and..."
Dean tries to stop her right there but he doesn't have to because she shuts down again and he realizes everything he's said to her lately when she's been struggling is that it's all gonna be okay. But he doesn't know how she's really been feeling after all that's happened since the day of the broken door. Therefore it feels to him as if all he's been doing is lie to her for weeks, and he wants to make it up to her. And that's why in this moment, he realizes sending her away is the right thing to do.
"You should go inside and finish packing," he says after he's shushed at her and she's stopped crying. "But I suggest you run past the kitchen on your way upstairs if you don't want an encounter consisting of lies from another adult."
"Thanks, dad," she says, wiping her tears away on the shoulder of his blue coverall and he places a kiss on her forehead before he lets go of her.
"I'm gonna be right in, honey, I'm just gonna finish up here," he says as she runs back in from the rain.

The cafe visit is a silent Sunday midday with a couple of old people and a group of friends with their babies in the cozy little diner. Leah isn't hungry anymore when they get there and she hasn't said a word to Dean since their argument in the driveway.
Cas is just wandering about like a question mark because nobody's told him why his husband and daughter aren't talking, but him and Dean make small talk anyway.
Leah is spending all her time thinking about the plane ride and imagining her own funeral. They're not gonna have her body in the coffin because it's gonna perish in the fire that will occur after the plane crash. The whole thing will just be an 'I told you so' to her parents when they realize that she was right. Despite never having been at a funeral, she knows some things from TV shows. And she wants white roses on her grave.
A waiter approaches the table. Dean and Cas have looked at the menus and they're ready to order. Leah forces herself out of her train of thoughts and orders a glass of water with mostly ice cubes in, after her parents already ordered drinks several minutes ago. Cas starts fiddling with her hair.
"Honey, are you alright?"
"White roses," she blurts out but shakes her head immediately afterward.
"Um. Sorry, what?"
"What about white roses?" Cas asks with a frown on his face.
"Nothing. Just thought about something. What did you say?"
"I asked you if you were alright. I thought you were hungry but you only ordered ice water."
"Oh, yeah. No, not hungry." She smiles, her face pale. She doesn't even throw a glance Dean's way though he's looking at her in worry, knowing what she's going through.
Cas takes turns looking from Dean to Leah and back at his husband again.
"Okay, what the hell is going on now?" he asks. "I feel like I should know because this silence between you two is deafening."
"We're okay," Leah says and shrugs. "I'm just tired and scared but that has got nothing to do with dad."
"Plane crash still scaring you?" Dean asks and slaps his hand in front of his mouth the second after. "Plane ride. Plane ride. Goddammit. I'm sorry, Leah, I honestly meant to say plane ride. I think you got into my head talking smack about this trip."
"I know you did. It's okay," she says and laughs to hide the shivering. Fuck. He couldn't have said anything that made her feel safe, he had to slip and say something terrible.
Cas shoots her a concerned look and she just goes with it. She knows both of them feel like they need to be concerned about her, and she also knows for a fact that it's needed. But she also feels like Dean isn't taking her fear of flying seriously.
The waiter comes back with water for Leah and Cas, and coffee for Dean. He looks at Leah.
"You sure you don't want anything to eat?" he asks.
"Yeah, a hundred percent, thanks," she mumbles and gives the waiter a friendly smile before he walks off.
"So, Leah, what did you think of the house we're thinking about buying?" Cas asks lovingly, sipping from his ice water. She shrugs and then smiles.
"Are the stairs as creaky?" she asks.
Dean scoffs.
"The house is pretty old, but it was very recently renovated. It's beautiful," Cas remarks.
"I know," Leah replies as she drinks from her water. "I saw the pictures and I like what I see."
"Well, that's good. Sam told me he'd take you there for a private showing," Dean says. "So you'll be the first one to see it in real life! Then you can decide, and we'll be living there together before you know it."
"So it won't be long before you come after?" their daughter asks hopefully.
"It won't b long, we promise," Cas says and smiles.