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

40. Detroit

After a full day of driving, Leah finally makes it to her destination late in the evening. At this point, Dean hasn't even considered calling his ex girlfriend to tell her what their daughter's plans are, and Leah steps up on the porch of her mother's house, bracing herself as she presses the doorbell.
"Hello?" a man she hasn't seen before, asks when he opens the door and looks at her with his head tilted. Leah shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house, I'm looking for my mother."
As she's turned around and is about to leave, the stranger stops her by saying her name, and she turns on the heel and looks at him. "How do you know my name?"
"Lisa has pictures of you that your father sent her," he explains. "You have the right house, you know. I'm Michael." He reaches out his hand to greet her but she takes a step back at the introduction, thinking about the other Michael that she knows and she's taken back for a moment. The man stares at her, worried. "Are you okay?" he asks.
"Michael, who is it?" a woman asks behind him and approaches the door. When she sees who it is, she stops. "Leah," she breathes.
"Hi," Leah whispers and regrets even coming to Detroit at all. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be here," she says and turns to leave again, but is stopped by her mother who runs up to her and grabs her hand. "No, no, it's fine. Are you okay? How did you get here?"
"I drove," the young girl confesses and looks at her mom with tears in her eyes. "I just don't know where to go."
"You can come in, Leah, you're always welcome here," Lisa says and embraces her estranged daughter who clings to her for life, suddenly experiencing a feeling of familiarity.
"Did you come here alone all the way from South Dakota?" Michael asks from the doorway, and Lisa strokes Leah's hair back and wipes her face a little before putting an arm around her and leading her towards the door. She nods and sniffles. "But my dads don't know I'm here," she says cautiously, and Lisa exchanges looks with her partner before she leads the girl inside and shows her into the kitchen, sitting her down. They're soon joined by Michael, who Lisa introduces. "Leah, this is my fiancee, Michael," she proclaims, and Leah turns to the man and reaches her hand out to him. "I'm sorry. I'm Leah."
"What are you sorry for?" he asks with a frown and sits down in a chair beside her as Lisa puts water on for tea.
"For just barging in here," she says, and is shot a sad smile from her birth mother.
"Like I told you, you're always welcome here, you don't need to explain anything. If you're in trouble, we'll take care of you." She suddenly claps her hands together. "Oh, you just turned 16," she exclaims, remembering the date before on the calendar hanging on the fridge, where she's marked Leah's birthday with red rings. She had wanted to call, but didn't know if Leah wanted to talk to her.
"Yeah, yesterday," Leah says and smiles a little, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Michael gets up to get a blanket from the couch in the living room. Leah looks up on the wall to see a picture of herself from a summer a couple of years back, sitting on the hood of the Impala in Bobby's auto shop yard, with a bottle of coke in her hand, grinning at her father who was taking the picture. She smiles a little wider, and Lisa smiles back at her. "I hope it's okay that I have it. Your dad sent it to me and I found it too beautiful to not have on my wall," she says quietly as Michael reemerges and drapes the blanket over Leah's shoulders and sits down next to them.
"Thanks," Leah says and smiles to her stepdad and turns back to her mom. "Yeah, it's fine. It's a good memory."
"So your dads don't know you're here?" Michael asks and looks at the girl, who shakes her head quietly and when Lisa notices she's about to tear up again, she stops her fiancee. "It's not important. We're here if she needs help."
"No, of course, I know that, but they must be worried sick about her," he argues.
Leah looks down at her hands, picking at her nails. "They've gone crazy, both of them. I just needed to get away."
"So you ran away?" Lisa asks and looks at her daughter lovingly. "I can call them if you want to."
"No, no, don't, I don't want them to know where I am. I borrowed my boyfriend's car. I promised him I'd be back, but I don't know when I'll go back, it's just too much at home right now."
"Well, what happened? What triggered all this?" her mother replies as Michael gets up again to take the water off the stove and find the teabags in the cupboard.
"I-" Leah begins but is cut off by her voice breaking and the phone starting to ring at the same time. Leah's stepdad leaves the tea and goes to pick up the phone hanging on the wall beside the fridge and answers. Leah sighs and clears her voice.
"I just had a baby," she sobs and looks at her mom, bursting after not talking about it. The emotions have been overpowering the whole drive, but she's once again cut off when Michael hands Lisa the phone. "It's her dads," he explains shortly, and she shakes her head. Leah looks up at him and the couple can see the fear in her eyes which disturbs them. "How did they know I'm here?" she whispers and stares at Lisa, who asks her partner to hang up. He steps back and tells them he'll call later before he joins the girl and the woman by the table again.
"You had a baby?" Lisa asks, wide eyed and puts a hand on her daughter's. "What happened?"
"Well, I had twins, and one of them died," Leah cries. "And my dads came up with this crazy explanation and they're scaring me and I don't want to go back there!"
Lisa suddenly understands the fear in Leah's eyes when she heard her dads were calling and gets out of her chair, crouching next to her daughter and hugging her tightly. "It's okay, Leah, nothing is going to happen. You'll be okay. I'll make sure that it'll be okay. You don't have to go back there if you don't want to. I think you need some rest. Do you want something to eat or drink?"
Leah shakes her head into Lisa's shoulder. "No, I just wanna sleep, I'm so tired."
"Okay, that's fine, I'll show you to the guest room. You'll be fine, I'll talk to Dean."
The girl sniffles and is helped up by her mom and led out of the kitchen, into the living room and up the stairs to a hallway. Here, she leads her daughter into a cold, dark room with a nice double bed and tucks her in after turning on the bedside lamp, and lays down beside her.
"I'm gonna keep you safe, I promise," she whispers. "I won't let anyone get to you who you don't want near. And you can stay for as long as you like."
"Mom?" Leah whispers, it feels unnatural, strange, because she's never had a mom, there's always only been surrogates.
"Yeah, Leah," Lisa says softly as they're laying side by side.
"Why did you give me away?"
Lisa turns to look at her daughter and sees her shaking slightly, her eyes filled to the brim with tears, scared to know the answer to a question she's been asking herself for so long.
"Oh, Leah," she whispers. "Dean and I were eighteen. He was traveling with his dad and Sam, and I was going to college when we met while I was living at home. I had a couple of siblings who were still little and we didn't have the space or the money to raise you. You have to believe that I was heartbroken the day I had to give you up for adoption. It was the worst thing I had ever done and the moment I left the house after college, I started looking for you. But my mother had ordered a closed adoption without my knowledge, and only Dean's name was on the birth certificate. He was traveling all over the country doing several different kinds of jobs, and we figured he couldn't raise a child that way. So you ended up in the foster system."
Leah blinks away the tears and stares up at the ceiling for a little while, processing it all. "I can't remember any of the foster homes I were in. I just remember living in that house in Kansas. I miss it."
"Why did you move away from Kansas?"
She turns to her mother again, fighting the urge to cry. "My dads thought it would be better for me. I had just been through something really horrible and hid it from them for a while and when they found out, they thought a fresh start would be better, so they sent me away early to live with uncle Sam and aunt Madison. My first night in Sioux Falls I was sent to the hospital and they said that I had a miscarriage."
Lisa frowns and reaches for Leah's hand. "I thought you just gave birth?"
"Yeah, yesterday," Leah whispers, trying to stop crying. "I did give birth. To twins. But something was wrong with one of them so the other one died."
"You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," Lisa says softly and wipes the tears off her daughter's face.
"Thank you, that's all my dads have wanted to do, that's one of the reasons I left. I just, I don't wanna go back there, mom, I'm so scared!"
Lisa reaches forward and engulfs her child in a warm, tight hug while she cries. "I'll fix this, honey, I promise. I will make up for what happened."
Leah slowly drifts off to sleep in her mom's arms and is sound asleep an hour and a half later when there's a soft knock on the door. She looks up to see her fiancee when he opens the door carefully. "The dads are here, and they want to talk to Leah," he whispers.
Lisa carefully unwraps her arms from her daughter and tucks her in, turning off the light before she joins her future husband in the hallway, closing the door quietly and joining the two men in the hallway downstairs.
"Hey, Lisa," Dean says and smiles ever so slightly when she walks up to him but frowns when she scowls at him. "What did you do to our daughter?" she exclaims.
"Whoa, what? What do you mean?"
"She took two hours to calm down after her trip here, she was terrified when you called, what the hell happened?!"
"I'll explain it, if I can just-"
"No," Lisa cries and steps in front of Dean as he's about to go up to the guest room, blocking his path.
"What are you doing? Let me see my daughter, I need to talk to her!"
Lisa crosses her arms and stares at the man she used to love. "She doesn't wanna talk to you. She's scared of you. So explain it to me. Leaving her out of it. She needs to rest. She gave birth yesterday," she says and looks from Dean to Cas and back again.
Dean sighs and shoots the mother of his daughter a worried look. "At least tell me she's okay."
She just shortly shakes her head in reply.

Leah woke up when Lisa left the room, when she heard her other stepfather-to-be telling her mom that her dads had arrived and wanted to talk. Suddenly not tired anymore, she gets quietly out of bed and walks over to the door, opening it slightly to listen to the conversation downstairs, and overhearing Dean begging to see her, to explain, to tell her he's sorry, and Lisa refusing to let him. Leah closes the door again and gathers her things quickly, puts her shoes and her jacket back on and looks out the window to see if there's a way she can get out without walking through the house, facing her three parents. She's thankful to see a fire escape that she can easily walk down, and she finds blankets and pillows to put underneath the duvet to make it appear as if she's still there. When it quiets down downstairs, she takes her bag, throws it over her shoulder and leaves the note on the nightstand before she climbs out the window and closes it behind her.