Supernatural One-Shots

(T) Knight in Shining Armor (Dean x Daughter)

Dean saves his daughter after she'd been held hostage by vampires. They kill the pack and go back to the motel. Ellie has a flesh wound and a broken arm she won't let him look at, afraid he's gonna throw her out or hate her when he sees her scars from self harming.

In his FBI suit, of all pieces of clothing that exist in this world. That's what my dad is wearing as we walk out of that abandoned factory in the middle of nowhere out on the countryside. While he was busy doing business at the local police station, chatting with locals about folks disappearing, he had gotten a call from one of the vampires keeping me hostage after they had taken me from our motel room. That was the bottom line, I didn't yet know the details as I had been sitting in a room on my own, tied up, a Winchester had fought bravely for his daughter's life and we had both just gotten out of there, barely alive. 

Dean threw his black suit jacket over my shoulders making sure I wouldn't freeze as we walk back to the car, his good old Impala. I'm holding my arm up with my other one, wincing in pain as my father holds the door open for me, helping me in before he walks over to the other side of the car and gets in.
"Your arm okay?" Dean asks as he starts up the engines, his eyes on my eyes, then my arm, then the dashboard of the car as he drives out of the driveway and onto the highway.
"It's fine," I reply, pulling his jacket down from my shoulders and placing it in my lap. I shudder a little due to the freezing temperature in the car, caused by the November frost.
"Listen, I'm gonna look at it when we get back to the motel, okay? Are you hurting anywhere else?"
"Just a flesh wound across my thigh, I guess," I point out as I look down on my legs. The jeans that had been decoratively ripped when I bought them at the store, are now severely screwed with as one of the vampires somehow managed to get a knife stuck into my thigh and carve half way down to my knee. I had screamed in pain and dad had run over to slash the vamp's head. As I looked into its eyes while watching its life go away, I realized the knife thing the vamp had done to me hadn't been worse than any other sort of pain I've endured in my short life.
It's not that I'm not used to sharp objects, or pain for that matter. As the only daughter of the well-known, badass hunter Dean Winchester, I had had my share of hunting, and seeing lots of creatures kids my age would die to put on their Youtube channel. It's been a painful upbringing as dad had the choice to leave and never see me again after my mother left, or take me with him because he felt like he needed to know where I were at all times.
My mom left when I was six years old, just randomly took off with another guy in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. My dad was on the other side of the state working a job with his brother Sam, and I spent the morning after in complete panic over being completely alone, not having any of my parents there. I had found a cell phone and I called for dad and he came straight home, he investigated if anything had taken her but he quickly came to the conclusion that my mother had left us. My parents had been fighting and arguing for weeks to end while I was placed in bed, crying my heart out in fear for them splitting up because I didn't wanna live alone with either of my parents because of their jobs.
So obviously I ended up with my dad and he got me and we took off the same morning to finish the hunt, and we moved out of the house, sold it and then took off for good. We've been on the run for eight years now, just hunting, and it's been traumatic, for one. That's what the hundreds, thousands of very visible cuts along my arms and wrists stand for. That's why the vampire couldn't hurt me more than I have hurt myself.

"You okay?" a voice asks, parting me of my thoughts. I shake my head to get them to go away completely and I turn to Dean, who's stopped the car and is just sitting there, calmly observing me.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I ask with an act of cheerfulness, as I tend to do when trying to get out of a situation. I move around uncomfortably. I hate that question and I wince when the shooting pain from my arm burns through my entire body and I remember my fractured arm, the arm my dad is gonna have to look at.
"You were kinda gone there for a moment. Are you sure you are okay, kiddo?" he asks and I can see it in his face, he means it genuinely. I'm just wondering these days.
"Yeah, I'm totally fine, I promise! My thigh hurts loads, but I'm coping." I don't mention my arm in case he's forgotten it.
He nods, gives my face a flat stare for a second and then he gets out of the car. I try to do the same but the ache in my arm prevents me from opening the door on my side. Dean quickly rushes over and gently helps me out and leads me to the motel room as he shuts the car door. We walk up the three steps and he unlocks our door, letting me step inside before he closes the door behind us.
So dad was also wounded, but considerably less than me, but that's okay, it just proves what fuck-up of a daughter I am. He steps over to the bathroom to get some clean towels and warm water and the first aid kit, and comes right out again, telling me to sit down on my bed. I walk over to the bed I slept in, the bed I was sleeping in when I was suddenly captured by a gang of vampires. My life is so strange sometimes.
My heart starts beating considerably faster when Dean rolls up his blood-soaked sleeves which were clear white when he left me at the motel earlier and steps over to the bed with an ice bag in his hand which he places on my shoulder, and he sits down on the floor next to me with damp towels in one hand and the first aid kit in his other, settling down to get ready to tend to my wounds.
"Shouldn't you fix yourself up first?" I ask him, and he shakes his head as he finds a scissor from the kit. "No, kiddo, you're my number one priority. And I'm not the one that's so badass that I took on a flesh wound on this hunt. You were pretty awesome back there, I'm proud of you," he says. The words flutter in my chest for a second, he's proud of me, but they don't last long. I half smile at him as he asks me where the wound is, with the scissor in his hand.
"Thigh. What... what are you doing with that?" I ask with a suspicious look on my face. He starts looking sorry for some reason. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I know you liked these jeans. I promise I'm gonna buy you new ones, okay?" he asks as he starts cutting my jeans off where the wound starts and he groans when he sees it, and I start wincing again. "Fuck," I mutter under my breath.
"Language, honey," he says. "I hate doing this to you." He prepares a sewing needle and some thread, and I try to prepare for the pain that's to come. I force myself to look down on the flesh wound and I think of what kind of life I could have had instead, if my mom didn't leave that night. Or what if I hadn't been born? What if... -
"Ow!"
Dean sighs when the first pinch of the needle is done, and I'm brutally dragged out of my thoughts. The shock made me move more than I should, and my arm bursts pain out again. Dean pierces my skin with the needle again. Tears spill up in my eyes and threaten to start falling. I clench my jaw. Third pinch. A tear spills down on Dean's hand and he looks up on me, his face expression softening as he stops what he's doing for a second. "I'm sorry, honey, but you know I gotta do this. Okay? It's gonna be okay, I promise. Just hold on for a couple more minutes. No filter," he adds, and I sniffle, try to make the tears stop running, but the fourth pinch gives me a lump in the throat and halfway into the fifth pinch I start sobbing lightly, leaning my face in my good hand as I wince in pain. All sorts of movements make everything hurt even more.
"You're doing really, really good, kiddo," Dean promises. "I just gotta do a few more. A few more, then we'll look at your arm and then we'll go out for burgers if you feel up for it. Please hold on for just a few more seconds, okay? Talk to me. Are you okay?"
"I'm- I'm-" I take a long shaky breath. "Oh my god," I sob by the seventh pinch.
"If it's any consolation, this hurts me too," he says. "I hate seeing you in pain, and that's why I need to hurry this up. It's only five more stitches, I swear. You can do five more pinches, sweetheart," he says at the eighth one. I reach for his shoulder, desperate to have something soothing to turn to, to hold in, and he clenches his jaw as he pierces my skin for the ninth time, and tighten the thread through all of the holes, and I jump ever so slightly again as I hear him start counting down.
He tightens the thread at the twelfth stitch and makes sure it's tightened well, before he takes up the whiskey bottle and spills some to get away the blood and to make sure it won't get infected, as I whimper. Then he wipes the blood off his hands with one of the towels, and places another one on top of my wound and finally gets up, putting his hands on my cheeks and kiss me longingly on my forehead, then sitting down on my side.
"You were really brave, sweetheart. Just this one task and we're gonna go out to eat, okay? You think you can do that?"
I feel my heart beat faster and faster, I can't let him look at my arm or he's gonna see my cuts. And they're so clean, so perfectly placed, they can't have been made at a hunt, like after being scratched up by a werewolf or a vampire or a fucking wendigo. He's gonna know.
He's gonna know.
He puts a hand on my shoulder and I try to slip out of his grip by leaning in the opposite direction. "My arm is good, I just need an aspirin or something and I'll be okay," I explain, trying desperately to get out of the situation; I just wanna go to sleep and forget about all of this. I just don't need this to happen. Not today.
"Sweetheart, you were flung across the room and landed on a table with your arm first, I saw that clearly. I think you're making it less worse than it really is."
"I promise, my arm is okay. We can go out to eat now, right? I bet you're hungry after that successful hunt. We should celebrate it!"
Dean frowns visibly and reached for my shoulder again. He reaches the spot where I'm pretty sure my arm is broken really badly, and I whimper in pain, hopeful that he didn't hear as I again slip away from his hand. Tears spill up in my eyes when I see the frowned, concerned face of my father before me.
"Is something wrong, kiddo?" he suddenly asks quietly. "Is there something you don't want me to see?"
I can't stop the tears anymore, I can't, and the very known salt liquid is pouring out of my green eyes as I've turned my face away from him, it gets harder to breathe, I'm about to choke on the lump in my throat. I take a deep breath and the people in the other room could probably hear that I'm crying.
"Ellie, please talk to me. Why won't you let me look at your arm?" he asks, and puts a hand on my back, trying to get me to turn to him. I do turn to him, but not willingly, and I'm ashamed that he sees my red face again, the tears, I'm not as strong as he wants me to be.
"Baby, I promise I won't get mad. I won't get mad if you show or tell me, it's just really important that I get to look on your arm. You are gonna be in a lot more pain if you don't let me."
I inhale sharply. Here goes everything, I think, as I use my good hand and some help from dad to try to get off the previously blue, now blue-purple-red-ish sweater I fell asleep in. When nothing goes, he picks up the scissor from the first aid kit still rested by our feet, and he cuts the sweater open, right from the bottom to the hole for my head, and I take off the rest, revealing a severely hurt arm, bruised in seemingly all the colors of the rainbow, adding black for the dried-up blood. And all the way from my shoulder to my hand, are hundreds, hundreds of scars I made myself.
Old ones, new ones, they're all there, like a gallery of my life, of all my fuck-ups, of all my many sleepless nights, of all the sorrows and rage fits and everything. It's all there, and my dad can really see his daughter for the first time in his life, and mine.
I shut my eyes and wait for the inevitable shouting and screaming and throwing things across the room. I wait for seconds while I still feel my arm hurt so bad, it hurts so bad I can't cope anymore. I forgot that I was crying and as I raise my good hand up to my eyes to wipe away my tears, I feel a warm, lovingly hand get in my way, carefully wiping my tears away, he rests the hand on my cheek and pulls me in carefully, kissing my forehead.
"That arm looks pretty bad," he whispers. "We need to go to the hospital. Okay?"

A couple of bottles of pain killers, a cast and four hours later, I'm sent out of the hospital in considerably less pain than I was in when we got there. My dad is, as always, by my side to keep me in sight. I wasn't asked about the scars while I was in there with him and the doctor, both of them were probably uncomfortable asking about it. But now dad and I are gonna be alone, and I have to tell him why.
Once we're in the car, both of us put on our seat belts, and dad sighs, leaning his arms and his head on the steering wheel. It's gotten lighter outside, morning is coming. After all that's happened, I completely forgot we came home in the middle of the night, and I've forgotten dad might be so, so tired after saving me from vampires, stitching up my broken body, wanting to try to fix something that can't ever be fixed.
I give up waiting for the 'talk', the talk where he worries, where he tries to make everything okay, and I turn my head to the window to watch the sun come up, ready for him to start the car so we can get back to the motel, sleep, and leave.
Then he suddenly reacts, he sits back normally and he turns to me, he helps his jacket that he put around my arms, off the good arm, and he sort of studies it, he strokes over the scars, I can't look at him, don't wanna see the disappointed look on his face.
"Ellie, I know you're not gonna wanna believe this, but I know how you're feeling," he suddenly says, really calmly, and I can hear that he's really serious. I turn my head to him and I can see tears in his eyes as he holds my thin, scarred arm in his always warm hands.
"You what?" I ask, frowning.
"I mean, I don't know how you're feeling personally but I know the feeling of wanting to punish yourself for things you don't deserve punishment for." He carefully puts the arm back in my lap and he rolls up the sleeve on the new shirt he changed to before we went to the hospital. There, on his arm, I see lots of pale streaks against his sun-tanned skin, and I gasp ever so slightly, letting my hand raise and stroke a finger across his arm, and I feel like I feel when I do the same thing on my own arm. I look up on him and I can see him smile at me, and I throw myself into his arms, letting him hug me. It feels so good, for once, to have someone truly know how I feel.
"I'm so sorry, I've just always felt so alone and to myself, I didn't even think about that fact that you might have felt like that too," I sob, and he holds me even tighter to his chest, letting me say all the things I haven't dared saying until this point.
"It's okay, baby," he promises, "it's okay, I swear. You don't have to say sorry for the way you feel. But you really need to come talk to me, you can't keep pushing me away when you're in pain, it's just gonna make everything so much worse. You got that?"
"I got it," I say, and I sit back in my seat and sniffle a couple of times.
"I've heard you crying to yourself a couple of times, both in your sleep and when you're showering or in the bathroom, but I've just always assumed you've needed space, you've needed some time for yourself, I just never stepped in and I'm so sorry, kiddo."
"It's okay, daddy," I say, but he blows me off.
"I know you're only saying that to make me feel better, when I know you're not okay. But I'm gonna be by your side, okay? We're together in this, alright?"
I simply nod, knowing that if I try speaking anymore, I'm gonna break down crying in thankfulness; he's not mad, he's not disappointed, he's understanding and he really, actually knows how I'm feeling, and I'm never gonna be alone as long as I have him, and isn't that a goddamn blessing.
"Let's go for burgers when we wake up, or something?" Dean asks, wipes his eyes on his sleeve and smiles to me, and I nod smilingly at him. I'm so lucky I've got my dad, my badass vampire hunting dad, my knight in shining armor.