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

42. Nightmare Fuel

The last thing Leah remembers from the night before is the pain. The excrutiating pain from the punches she's had to take for so long now. She's been kept a prisoner for what feels like years, but she has no recollection of when it really began. Hours run into days and weeks and months, and still this nightmare never ends.
And last night got particularly bad. He lost control and knocked her unconscious. When she wakes up, she can barely open her eye. Some of her fingers look like they're in an unnatural shape. He must have broken them. There's blood on her sweater, on her pillow, her blanket, all over. Dried blood. She slides one of the unharmed fingers under her nose to check what's blocking the airways. Dried blood there, too. She must have taken a couple of punches to the face if she was bleeding from the nose.
Leah jumps when she hears footsteps in the hallway, and she backs up, she's scared he'll see that she's awake. What if he's drunk again already? It's still light out, so it can't be so late. He started drinking yesterday afternoon, but he didn't come upstairs until nighttime. He's nicer when he's sober, he tells her he's sorry, but she knows he isn't, or he wouldn't continue to abuse her.
"Leah," someone wheezes, and she can hear that it's him. She's not looking at him; she's hiding her face in her knees and barely peeks up when he enters the room. As if Dean doesn't know what he did when he was drunk last night, he looks shocked and apologetic at the sight of his daughter curled up on her bed, in pain, and visibly gets more scared the closer he gets to the bed.
"Please, dad, I'm hurting so much, please don't hurt me anymore," she whimpers, it usually doesn't help, it makes him more angry, but last night was the worst it had been in a long while. It's the vodka. The vodka makes him so angry and unstable.
"Leah, no, I would never hurt you," he says with audible hurt in his voice as he drops down on the bed close to her, but she backs further away, and is close to falling off the bed when he reaches for her.
"Please, just let me be, I can't take this anymore! Why don't you just kill me if you hate me so much?" The words take so much strength, but if she can get through to him, maybe he'll let her leave.
"No, honey, you have to listen to me, okay? Look at me, Leah. Please, just look at me. I swear on Cas' life I won't hurt you."
"Well, he's probably dead, so I don't get your point," she whimpers and a chill rushes through her body. If he's aggravated, she might never wake up again.
"Kiddo, this isn't real. You're in the hospital, in a coma. All this is just a dream. Please, I can help you, I will help you, but I need you to look at me." His voice is desperate enough to seem real, and she peeks up for a second, then down, and then she remembers the real worry shining through his eyes and she looks up again, only able to see through the left eye because the right one just won't open. Tears run into her eyes, and it stings so bad, which makes the tears run even more. Dean leans over, and she jumps again when he puts his hand carefully to her cheek and scoops closer.
"Jesus Christ," he whispers. "How long has it been like this?"
"You would know," she cries and tries to back up, but she'll only fall to the floor and that's gonna hurt. She doesn't even know if she can walk.
"No, I wouldn't, because none of this is real. Please, honey, you gotta believe me. You ran away six weeks ago in Detroit after you gave birth. I was there through all of it, Cas too, and we've been looking for you all over. Sam just found you a couple of hours ago in an old abandoned warehouse, and you're in a coma in the hospital right now. And if you don't wake up, you're gonna die. Please don't do that to me. Don't do that to Cas. We need you, honey, we can't live without you."
"How do I know it's just a dream?" Leah whispers. "How do I know that you're not just gonna hurt me again? Or send Michael back up here?"
Leah can't remember ever seeing him as hurt as when his eyes meet hers. He's never really shown any remorse. Not when he's gotten drunk and let Michael, father-of-her-children Michael, come over and stay with them under the guise of "visiting his girlfriend in Sioux Falls", closed his ears and gotten drunk while Michael hurt Dean's daughter in ways she can't even talk about. Ways she can't even think about.
"Leah," Dean whispers and leans forward, lending her his hand. "Come on. I know you don't wanna trust me, and I know it hurts and it always hurt, but I can help. Please let me help. Cas is waiting for us out there, he's worried sick sitting by your bedside and he's aching to see you again. Please just believe me, just for a minute."
Hesitantly, Leah takes his hand and lets him pull her to his side, and he hugs her tightly, rubbing her back. "God, I missed you, kid," he mumbles into her hair, and she sobs into his shoulder, finally starting to believe him.
"How do I wake up?" she whispers. "I don't know how to do this."
"I know this is your darkest fear," Dean begins. "That I'm physically abusive and that I'm on Michael's side and that Cas left." He stops and breathes in deep, all of him hurts when he looks at his daughter who's as small and thin as she is in that hospital bed outside her head. "I'm gonna have to ask you to do something really hard. Just... let go of the fear. You need to face it. You have to face dream me and Michael, and you need to stand your ground and refuse to let them hurt you. You do that, and you come back to me and Cas. But you need to hurry, I don't know how much time you have left."
"Dad," Leah whispers and looks down, and he puts a hand under her chin and tilts her head up so she'll look at him. He's blurry through the tears in her eyes, and he already knows what she's about to say.
"No, Leah, I'm not letting you stay here. You need to come back to the real world with me. You don't wanna be stuck here forever, in this nightmare. We're really out there. We wanna try our best to help. And I know you've been struggling. We all know. We saw the scars for the first time mere minutes ago," he says and strokes her underarm that's covered in her blood-soaked sweater. She pulls it back fast and wipes at her face. "I don't know what you're talking about," she breathes and pulls away from him.
"There's no reason to try and hide it, honey," he says softly. "We're standing by you, always. But I'm not gonna let you die. We are both getting out of here, together, or not at all."
The moment is ruined by footsteps in the hall, and Leah turns her head so fast toward the door her neck cracks, and in walks the other version of her father, the raging, abusive one with an empty bottle of vodka in his hand. He stops in his tracks when he sees what seems like a mirror, sitting on the bed, but the real Dean gets up and stands up to him. "You're not gonna hurt my daughter anymore," he sneers, but is quickly punched out by the nightmare version of himself, leaving Leah alone to fend for herself against the nightmare. Right behind comes Michael, and he sends Leah a grin that makes it run cold down her back. She cries out looking up at Nightmare Dean. "I'm just dreaming," she tells him. Her heart is pounding, what if this doesn't work? Then she's dead and has to stay in this nightmare forever.
Michael laughs, and Nightmare Dean stares at her with his eyebrows raised. "I'm sorry? You're dreaming?"
"Yeah, I am, you're not real," Leah says and gets up. "I'm not scared of you, because I know that if I wake up now, my dads are gonna be there and they love me and they would never really hurt me the way you have." She bites her lip, trying her best to believe her own words. But she must be dreaming. There wouldn't be two of her dads if she was awake. Dean wouldn't have been so loving. It's been like this nightmare forever. It's time to stand up for herself.
"You're not real, you can't be, because dad is still out there with me and I'm gonna get back to him. I'm gonna get back to them both."
The last thing she sees is the nightmare version of Dean Winchester's face crooked and angry, and a bottle of vodka flying at her face.

Dean shoots out of his chair when he awakens, back in the hospital room, on the opposite side of the bed as his husband who's holding their daughter's hand, and looks up at Dean in shock when he jerks awake. Dean, in turn, stares back at Cas and then to his daughter, and then back to Cas again.
"Isn't she awake yet?" he asks in horror, rushing up to the bed and looking at the heart monitor.
"No, there's no change. What happened? Did you talk to her?"
"Yeah, and believe me when I say it was really bad in there. But why isn't she waking up? She needs to wake up. I need to go back in there. She's still in there with them. I need to save her. Where's Sam?" he asks and looks around the room for his brother.
"He went home to get something for Leah that'll maybe help her get back faster. If there's something she recognizes out here, maybe it'll be easier."
"Please tell me he left some more Dream Root," Dean pleads and looks in the cup of tea he drank before he was punched out by his brother, but he emptied the cup entirely and Sam brought the rest with him home because he didn't think they'd need more. Dean picks up his phone and starts dialing his brother's number. "That bastard punched me out," he says angrily.
Cas frowns and gets up and walks up to his husband. "You told him to do it."
"No, not him, Leah's nightmare version of me. He hit me and that's why I woke up. But Leah is still in there with him, and Michael. And we can't let that happen. What if she doesn't wake up on her own?"
And just as Sam answers his phone, something starts happening on the heart monitor. Leah's heart rate is going up, dramatically. Dean lowers his phone and him and Cas turn to the hospital bed where their daughter is laying, as her whole body starts shaking. Cas rushes back up to the bed. "Leah?" he shouts, while Dean runs to the door and screams down the hall for a nurse, a doctor, anyone who can help with whatever's happening with her. The next second a doctor runs out of a room up the hall and toward him with two nurses behind him. Cas is standing over Leah, his hand holding hers, and Dean can see that she's opened her eyes, or, she's tried to, but the right one is so damaged it's basically glued shut until the swelling goes down. The convulsions lasted for only seconds, and now she's fighting the breathing tube. Dean comes to Cas' side and both fathers look in horror as the doctor quickly removes the tape and pulls the one and a half foot long tube up their daughter's throat. She immediately coughs and starts heaving for air as if she's breathing for the first time and she doesn't know how it's done.
"Leah, hey," the doctor, Owen Hunt, says. "You need to calm down. You're alright, but I'm gonna give you something to calm you down, okay?"
She stares at him with fear that quickly turns into calm when he injects her with something through a needle that's already deep in her vein. She breathes slower and the heart rate quickly goes back to normal, then she turns her head to the left and sees her dads' faces, mixed with relief and worry. "Daddies," she whimpers and reaches her one good arm out for Dean and Cas, and Dean runs around to the other side to embrace his child.
"Thank God you woke up, honey, I thought for a moment there that you weren't going to," he breathes into her unwashed, grimy hair and kisses her forehead lovingly. Cas does as well, and he lingers, it's been longer since he saw his daughter than when Dean saw her last, and he's been so worried sick.
Dean walks back around the bed to Cas while the doctor looks over the chart, and they sit down together, Cas holding Leah's hand.
"How are you feeling?" Cas asks.
"What happened?" Leah asks, her voice dry and cracked. The doctor waves a nurse to him. "Can you get her some water?" he asks, and she nods and walks out of the room. "Your uncle found you in a warehouse outside of Sioux City," he explains to the young girl who's looking around confused. "You've been in a coma, but we don't know why. What do you remember?"
Dean and Cas stare at Leah to see what she remembers, and she turns to them apologetically. "I remember the fight," she says and tries to get her hand back from Cas to wipe away her tears, but he won't let go of her; instead, he wipes away her tears for her.
"That's the last thing you remember?" Dean asks and sighs. "I'm so sorry, kiddo, it wasn't supposed to go like this. Nothing else?"
She shakes her head and stares at the doctor. "What happened to me?"
Doctor Hunt looks from the chart to the fathers as the nurse comes in with a glass of water and a straw. "I'm just gonna have a quick chat with your dads, is that okay? It's just gonna be a few minutes."
Dean and Cas get up, Cas hesitantly letting go of his daughter's hand, and they follow the doctor out into the hallway as the nurse helps Leah drink.
"You told the police that she disappeared six weeks ago?" doctor Hunt asks Dean, who nods in reply. "Yeah, but we still haven't been told what really happened to her and why she's so damaged. Her body, I mean. Her memories..."
"She just came out of a coma, it may take some time before she remembers everything. We're obviously gonna keep her in here for a while, until she heals properly. She's out of the woods, but you need to prepare for a long recovery. If she remembers everything she went through."
"What exactly did she go through?" Cas asks, reaching for Dean's hand.
The doctor sighs deeply and takes a few more steps down the hallway, and the Winchesters follow.
"As you're probably aware, she was found barely clothed, and she was battered and bruised and has suffered several fractures. I'm afraid she's showing signs of having been subjected to sexual violence."
Dean squeezes Cas' hand hard for a second and closes his eyes, breathing in hard. Cas sighs and looks down as Dean walks even further down the hall and punches the wall with all his might. "Can't that kid ever catch a break?" he cries. Cas goes to retrieve him, and cradles his bloody hand in his as they walk back to the doctor.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Winchester," the doctor says empathetically. "We'll do everything we can to make her comfortable. We'll have a psychiatrist nearby if she suddenly remembers."
Cas looks down, and then up at the doctor. "Can we go back in to see her?" he pleads, and the doctor nods. "Yes. But can I look at your hand first?" he asks Dean and grabs it carefully. "Do you want me to sew that up for you?"
Dean shakes his head. "No, just wrap it or something. I just wanna be with my daughter."