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

46. Die, My Darling

It's in the middle of the night, Leah sees, when she wakes up and looks at the clock on her phone, wondering why she woke up. She closes her eyes and turns to the other side, hearing the winter winds flowing by outside her window. Then she opens her eyes and lets out a cry. Sitting up in bed and backing up, she stares at her father who's sitting on the chair beside her bed, just watching her.
"Sorry, Leah, I just needed to see you for a moment, but you wouldn't let me."
"Please, go away, please don't hurt me!"
"Leah, honey, please," Dean sighs. "I need you. My life feels so empty, the house is not a home without you there. I can't live without you."
"Can't you go get uncle Sam?" she whimpers and stares him down in horror, afraid all her nightmares are gonna come true.
"No, I was thinking you and me could just talk," he says, and he starts seeming annoyed. "You need to stop running away from your problems. You have a daughter out there you haven't even bothered to go meet. Your boyfriend, the one whose car you borrowed to run away? He doesn't even know if you're alive, because you haven't told him you're back."
"I... I just got back from the hospital, you know that, I need to rest-"
"That doesn't make it okay," he shouts and slams his fist into the wall. Leah cries out and holds her hands up to her ears. "He loves you! You're supposed to be there! He never hurt you, like Michael did, like I let him do."
Leah looks slowly up from her bedspread and stares daggers at her biological dad who's turned into the nightmare she had, the nightmare she now realizes was real all along.
"I let him hurt you. I knew what happened to you in Lawrence, but I didn't do anything about it because you don't deserve my help. You need to stand on your own two feet. And yes, Cas left because of you. You notice how he's not here, he's sleeping in the bed at home?"
Leah sobs and stares at the bedroom door, trying to figure out if she can make a run for it and wake up Sam, or at least wake him up by shouting.
"Everyone you love is gonna leave you. And I will do that as well, just after I've done this." Dean gets up and walks towards the bed.
"Uncle Sam!" Leah screams when she sees the hate shining out of her father's eyes in the half dark room. There's no sound of slamming doors or footsteps running down the hallway. It's just the wind outside howling, and the floorboards creaking under Dean Winchester's feet as he kneels down in the bed and reaches both his hands out for her neck, squeezing it as tightly as he can.
"Dad, please, I can't breathe," Leah cries and gasps for air.
"That's the point. You're going out of this world and someplace where you belong. I don't know if that's Hell or Purgatory, I've been both places, and honestly, both are Hell. But if there's one thing I know, it's that you're not gonna survive this night."
Leah fights the murder attempt until her eyes start flimmering in black and it's all going dark because she can't breathe.

The next thing she sees is Castiel sitting on the bedside. The light is on, Sam and John are there, and she's being shaken awake. She heaves for air and she's still hyperventilating from the nightmare that seemed so real, it feels like Dean's hands are still trying to wring the life out of her.
"Leah, thank God," Cas breathes as he helps her sit up in bed. She lunges forward, holding her hands to her neck and breathing hard.
"Slow down, honey, it was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. Shh, slow down. It's okay," Cas whispers and takes her hand and kisses the top of her head.
"He was here! He was just here, and he was trying to kill me," Leah cries as she looks up at Sam who's standing there in his pajamas, stressing out about the screaming he was woken up by.
"Who, Leah? Who was here?" Sam asks and comes over to the bed.
"Dad! Dad was trying to kill me! I- he- he tried to choke me to death!" she sobs and is still struggling to breathe.
Cas looks over at Sam, who nods quietly to him, and he gets up. "This has gone on long enough," Cas whispers to John who's still standing over by the door and walks out into the hall, picking up his phone as Sam takes his place in the bed, trying to get his niece to settle down.
"Dean," Cas says into the phone.
Dean, who's still awake, drinking scotch and watching a terrible midnight show on cable, answers with a question. "What's wrong?" he asks and gets up off the couch, still carrying his glass.
"We need you here. You need to get over here right now."
"She doesn't want me there, Cas. She's terrified of me, you should know this by now!"
"I know, but it's a horrible scene here. We need you here. She doesn't know it, but you're the only one who can help. You're the only one who's ever been able to help."
"Look, everything I've done, I've done for that kid. But I can't help her if she won't let me."
"We'll let you help her," Cas cries in frustration, trying to keep his voice down so Leah won't hear what they're up to. "Dean, she needs you, and she needs you now. She's completely convinced that you just tried to strangle her. She just woke the whole house, screaming like everything was on fire. And we can't get her to settle down. Are you coming or no? We're fixing this, right now, once and for all."
"Okay, I'm on my way," Dean says and hangs up, puts down the glass, picks up his jacket and rushes out to the car to drive to his brother's house to finally make up with his daughter.

When Dean arrives ten minutes later, Sam's still sitting on Leah's bedside and Cas is waiting for him downstairs. "Thank you, Dean," Cas smiles and kisses his husband. "Come with me," he says and leads Dean up the stairs. "Sam," he calls out, to get Sam to leave the room. Leah is laying in a foster position in her bed, her back turned to the door, with her blanket over her when her fathers step into the room. Dean is reluctant, knowing there's gonna be a full-fledged panic inside the room when she acknowledges that he's there.
Cas closes the door behind him and sits down on the bedside. "Leah, I need you to stay calm for me right now, okay? We brought in someone who can help," he says softly and gets her to turn around. She immediately sits back up in bed and backs up in panic, just like she thinks she did less than half an hour ago. Dean is standing in the middle of the room with his jacket still on, a little buzzed but concentrated enough that he knows he can do this, knows he can reconcile with his child, if she'll let him.
"Please don't hurt me again," she whimpers at him, and Cas looks up, Dean looking back at him with a hopeless look in his eyes.
"Leah, I've never hurt you, and I never will," Dean says quietly and takes a few steps closer to the bed, but stops when he gets to the chair that he sits down on just a few feet away from the bed.
"I'm staying right here, okay? I'm not moving from this position unless you want me to. Cas is right there to protect you if I try to hurt you. But honey," he says and draws a shaky breath, "I won't. I will not hurt you, not ever. And I know things are rough right now and you're scared and you don't know which way is up and which is down, but I'm here, all of me, like I've always been, here for you. I know your walls are up and nightmares are blending in with reality, but Leah..."
He just sighs and looks down, reaching his hand up to his eyes for a second, wiping off the oncoming tears of hopelessness.
Cas looks at his daughter, pleading with her to just listen to what her father has to say. He backs off a little too, giving the two of them more room to just look at each other and really hear each other's words.
"I was in there with you in that nightmare, I could feel the pain, the fear, I could see the damage that he had done to you. But that wasn't me. That was a djinn nightmare, twisting your mind to make you see what you fear the most. And I felt some of it, and I know how scary it was for you. That's why I've never drunk when you've been there. Except for tonight before I got here, because I didn't think this would happen tonight. And I know that you don't realize this right now, but I would never get so drunk that I'd lose control and hurt you. Nothing could ever make me touch a hair on your head. You're my little girl, and you've been that since the day you walked into our motel room and put my heart in your hands."
Leah's trying to deny the tears running down her face, knowing they're not there out of fear so much anymore, but out of sorrow, seeing what's become of the strong, able, happy man who gave his whole life up just to be her parent.
She wipes her face and looks down into the blanket as she hears Dean sniffling. Cas has gotten off the bed and backed up to the door, where he's supervising the meeting, his heart breaking for his husband and their daughter.
"And I'm so afraid I'm gonna lose you," Dean says, his voice shaking, and looks back up at his daughter who seems torn. "I'm scared that I'm gonna lose you to the nightmare, to the darkness, to every damn thing you've gone through that put their mark on your soul. I don't wanna see that happening. And kiddo, I won't let it, because I know that you need me as much as I need you. It's this family against the world, but we can't win unless we stay together. I'm not ready to lose you to this world. I know there's so much bad, but there's so much good, too, and that's what we need to focus on."
There's quiet in the room as Dean hopes she'll say something, and she's trying to get the words out, but there are no words she feels she can say.
"Can you reach out your hand?" Dean asks and looks at her, leaning forwards, stretching out his. "If it's not too hard, we can start from here, okay? Baby steps. I will do anything I can to make sure that you know what's real and what's nightmare, and we'll sort through this together, like a family."
Leah bites her lip as a last ditch attempt to keep the sobbing at bay but it's too much, and she backs off again, hiding her face in her hands. Dean nods and slowly pulls his hand back, looking down on the rug on the floor when he sees from the corner of his eye, the brittle, scarred arm dressed in a pajama sweater reaching out for him. He looks at her, his eyes red from all the tears he's lost tonight, and he reaches back out for her, touching her hand, and then holding it in his. They look at each other for a few moments, and then Dean lets go of her hand and sits back. "Thank you, honey," he says and smiles, wiping at his face again. "That was really brave."
"Dad," Leah whimpers and brings her blanket up to her face, trying to stifle down the desperate crying. Cas tries to come over to the bed, but he stops when he sees that Leah is looking at Dean. Dean looks up at Cas who nods at Leah, and he gets slowly up from the chair and nears the bed experimentally. "I swear, I'm not gonna hurt you, kiddo, I just wanna hold your hand."
She nods and sobs and throws herself into his arms when he sits down on the bedside and he puts his arms tightly around her, holding her to his chest, kissing the top of her head. It feels like this hasn't happened in years. It's only been weeks, but to him, it's been almost a lifetime. It's been worse than the forty years he spent in Hell, the years that changed him into the man he is today. If he hadn't been through that, he probably wouldn't know how to handle another person besides himself. And for the past ten years, he's had a whole family who's been relying on him. And his daughter finally seems to trust him, at least a little, and that is the world to him.