bandit୨ৎ @burymeinviolette - Tumblr Blog

just a child ☆ sam winchester

summary: sam's raised you from the moment you were born until adulthood. getting hurt on a hunt shows you that while you're not a child anymore, you'll always be sam's kid

pairing: sam x daughter!reader ft. dean | genre: angst w/ fluffy ending | word count: 7.1k

warnings: reader is sam and jess's daughter (no physical features described, although reader is written to be white), sam is trying his best to be a good dad, typical hunting injuries, scared sam, one use of the word 'fuck' (he's scared okay ? leave him alone </3), caring dad!sam and dean being a good uncle

notes: requested !! we trying something new and different this time !!!! t'was a fun experiment, i've considered writing dad!sam before but never with a reader as his kid, so this was kinda fun :] also i think i should mention; reader is written as an adult in this fic. italics represent the flashbacks, normal text is the present btw :]

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It happens so fast.

One second, you’re off to his right, gun held in front of you with the kind of military precision that comes from years of learning to keep yourself alive in the toughest battlefields. You’re scoping the room, checking all the shadows and the corners, just like Sam taught you. One foot in front of the other, steps quiet but sure, toes of your boots testing the ground under them with each movement, assuring the floor is sturdy enough for your weight. The safety clicks off, fingers readjusting their grip on the gun and wrapping tight around the handle, thumb sweeping along the barrel once. Something cracks and your head whips around, Sam wincing just slightly at the force of it, ears listening for words from you or Dean, eyes watching for the thing you’re hunting.

The next second, you’re falling, and you’re falling hard. Your body curls in on itself, thrown backward with a force Sam’s never quite seen before. Or maybe he has, but he’s never seen it directed at you. You land, body bending backward in a way that would be almost comical to Sam if it wasn’t happening to you before his very eyes. A trail of red immediately curls down your temple, trailing back into your hair and staining the strands some raspberry colour that would be pretty if it weren’t made of your blood. A dark patch of it blooms on the fabric of your shirt, soaking into the cotton and sticking the fibers to your skin. Your name gets caught in Sam’s throat before it makes it out of his mouth, the letters dying on his tongue the moment they appear.

You’re nestled in Sam’s arms, one arm under your shoulders and the other under your knees, head lolling against his chest as he cradles you close. He remembers doing this with you when you were just a little kid, running to him in your carefully tied shoes, asking for him to carry you. He’d scoop you up and hold you close, just like he is now. Except this time, it’s not to comfort you after a scraped knee, or to swing you through the air while you ask if this is how it feels to fly. This time, it’s to move you from the Impala to your bedroom, mind only half paying attention to the mud and droplets of your blood that Sam’s boots track through the bunker. Dean’s somewhere ahead of him, opening the door to your bedroom and disappearing immediately to find supplies; needle and thread, no doubt. Alcohol too, for the cleaning, and maybe a bit to take Sam’s mind off of the fact it’s his daughter’s body he’s putting back together.

Sam lays your body carefully on the bed, only partly paying attention to the blood that’s staining your bedsheets. He’ll change them later when he knows you’re not bleeding out in his arms. He arranges your limbs carefully, settling each one into a position that will be comfortable if you happen to wake up while he’s working, but also keeps the areas he needs accessible. Something about your lashes fluttering softly against your cheeks reminds him painfully of Jess; you’ve inherited the little things. That shine in your eyes when you learn something new that you’re particularly fond of. The little smile you give Sam when he brings you a book, or breakfast, or some random trinket he thought you might like. The rosiness to your cheeks when you’re out in the sun, and the way the sun glances off your hair like it belongs there, tangled in the wild strands.

He goes to stand, goes to meet Dean for the supplies, but something stops him. Your body looks so fragile lying there, hands curled lightly around the ghost of your gun that he’d taken off you in his haste, hair blown around you like the cracked halo of a fallen angel. The strands spread against the pillow, the same spider webbing as the cracks in the ceiling above you, and for a brief moment, Sam is too afraid to look up lest your body be trapped there like Jess’s was. He thanks whatever gods exist every day that you were in the other room when it happened. That you never saw your mother up there on the ceiling, burning. That he had the conscience to scoop up your little body and clutch you close to his chest while Dean guided him through the thick smoke of the fire.

One trembling hand brushes the blood-smeared hair back from your forehead, your skin looking so pale and ashen under the clinical bunker lighting. Sam yearns for the colour to come back to your cheeks just from his touch alone, but he knows it’s not going to happen, not unless he can fix you up like he promised to on the drive back home. His quivering cracked lips press a soft kiss to the skin of your forehead, a ghostly press of skin on skin that he hopes fruitlessly will wake you up like it woke up all those fairy tale princesses he used to tell you about. He takes your hand in his, squeezing it softly and moving only when Dean comes back with the materials, setting them on the table and resting a firm hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“I can do it, if you want,” Dean says, jutting his chin in your direction.

“No-. No. I have to,” Sam replies, shaky, clearing his throat. “I have to.”

“Sammy, y’don’t have to do anything.”

“Dean-.” He swallows hard. “I have to.”

Then, quieter.

“I promised her I would.”

Dean nods, eyes darting around the room. “You don’t have to do this to yourself.”

“I’m her father, Dean. I need to do this.”

“Sam.”

“If she wakes up, I need to be there. I promised her I wasn’t gonna leave her for anything, Dean. Not even this.”

Dean sighs. The heavy kind, that sits in his ribs and pushes its way out. He’s not mad; he’s far from mad. He’s just absorbing it all, taking everything in and sorting it out in that Dean Winchester way. He’s never seen his little brother this scared. Not when John died, not even when Sam himself died. Back then, he was brave, sacrificing himself in ways nobody should ever have to. Now, there’s an anxious tremor in Sam’s hands that will only stop when you’re stitched up and as comfortable as you can be.

“Alright. Alright, Sammy. You’ve got her.”

Sam nods. “I got her.”

When you hit the floor, Sam’s world goes dark. Everything stops existing. It’s just you, on your back, blood trailing down your skin and onto the cobbled tiles underneath you. Skin already losing colour, but your eyes stay open, terrified, watching. You try to speak, but nothing comes out other than a garbled sound of pain and fear that could be ‘Dad’ but could also be ‘help’, or ‘no’, or ‘please’. Sam’s never moved this fast before, because suddenly it’s his kid on the floor, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get to you immediately. The monster makes a taunting sound that could be laughter, disappearing somewhere else, in search of a new target; Dean. Somehow, the fact Dean’s in danger doesn’t even cross Sam’s mind, not when you’re lying there just in his reach.

He clambers over to you, shoes catching in chips in the stones, slipping in the growing puddle of your blood at your side, voice already going rough from screaming your name. His hands hurriedly run up and down your sides, assessing the damage, pressing at your skin and fluttering away when you wince at his touch. His palms come away stained red, the colour draining from your face at the sight.

“’S that mine?” you ask weakly.

“No, sweetheart. Don’t think about it.”

“Dad-.”

He watches you with sad eyes, the kind that are scared and trying not to show it around you. The kind that’s hoping he’s sealed all the cracks in his heart well enough that he doesn’t start bleeding out with you on the floor. The kind of eyes that look at you and understand you need to know the truth about your situation.

“Did you hit something when you fell?”

You frown, already slipping into unconsciousness.

“Hey, hey. You gotta look at me,” Sam says, panicked.

“’M looking.”

“Did you hit anything?”

You slowly shake your head, groaning. “Nail.”

“Nail?”

You nod, swallowing. “Nail. Fingers. Fingernails.”

“They cut you?”

“Yeah.”

You blink, slow. “Dad?”

“Right here,” Sam says. “I’m right here.”

“I’m scared.”

You say it so small and quiet that it shatters Sam’s heart down the middle and breaks the halves into a thousand small pieces. They pierce his body, flooding his veins with hundreds of tiny knives, sticking into his skin like the spines on a burr. Poison in his body, blood running cold.

“It’s okay,” Sam promises. “You’re okay.”

“I’m not,” you reply.

“You will be. ‘M not gonna let anything happen to you.”

You smile, soft and slow, warm in the way that melts Sam’s heart. “I know.”

The blood is sticky in its half-dried state. Both Sam’s jacket and your shirt cling to your wound with the persistent attachment of a nightmare in waking hours. Sam feels bad for having to take your shirt off, pointedly looking away from your bare chest as he works at the wound on your side. A cursory examination of your back determines it’s nothing more than horrifically bruised, your skin already starting to turn a mottled blue and purple patchwork. Sam distantly remembers Jess bruising easily, and he’s forever glad you don’t seem to follow in her footsteps; but when you do bruise, you bruise nasty, the kind of bruise that sticks around for weeks longer than it needs to.

Dean took the liberty of threading the needle for Sam. A wise decision, given how bad his hands are trembling right now. He wouldn’t be able to hold the needle straight enough to thread it, let alone hold the thread steady to slide it into the eye. Instead, he reaches for a rag and soaks it in alcohol, whispering an apology to your unconscious form as he presses the rag to your wound. Your muscles flinch around his touches, a low whine that’s almost impossible to hear dragging itself from your chest with the energy of a man who’s been buried alive and risen from the grave. Sam wipes away at the edges of your wound with tenderness, the rag coming away pinker and pinker each time.

When he turns his attention to your main wound, he shrinks back on himself in pain. Not physical pain, because he’s not the one with a raw, angry wound in his side. Mental pain, the kind of pain that comes from believing you’ve failed the very thing you promised yourself to never fail. The kind of pain that comes from promising your dead girlfriend you’ll take care of your baby and protect her with your life and now seeing her lying there injured on the table before you. Sam swallows harsh, the sound catching in his throat and struggling to get down. Your fingers twitch against the sheets, a feeble attempt a reassurance. Sam’s lips quirk up of their volition, because a twitch means you’re alive, and in a bid to protect your privacy, he hasn’t been looking at the rise and fall of your chest so much as he’s been listening for the weak sound of your breaths.

The steady in and out of the needle through your skin makes Sam sigh heavy every time he thinks you’d be groaning in pain if you were awake. The mottled bruising on your skin is only getting darker the longer he works, and he’s afraid for you when you wake up and the feeling of it all hits you at once. He’ll have to make sure he brings you painkillers as soon as he’s done here, so that they can sit on the table and be ready for you when you decide to come back to his world. He works in silence, only pausing to wipe away blood or clear his throat before addressing Dean every time he pops in. Dean keeps his distance as promised, because he knows better than to distract Sam from this mission to keep you alive. But he talks, telling Sam anything and everything that comes to mind, in an attempt to keep his brother’s head on straight. Because when you wake up, and it is a when, not an if, Sam needs to be in his right mind to care for you. Because you’ll be asking for him if he’s not there, and as much as you love Dean as an uncle, nothing reassures you more than Sam’s steady presence, calm and right.

Tying off the last stitch, Sam dresses your wounds with careful precision, treating you as if you were awake and there to tell if something pinches or sits wrong, or too tight. He doesn’t dare try and put a shirt back on you, instead settling for spreading a clean sheet over your body and tucking it under your chin like he did when you were small. Something in him cracks at the bottom sheet being a little bloody, but he promises himself that’ll be the first thing he does tomorrow morning. Dean will help lift you while he changes the sheets, and Sam will settle you in the way you like. A clean cloth is run over your forehead by Sam’s hand, much steadier now that you’re breathing normally again and the lines on your face have devolved into something like casual acceptance of the pain. He’ll help you shower later, when you can sit up for long enough to sit in the bath.

In and out. In and out. It’s all he can think of while he kneels beside your body on the floor. In and out. One, two, three. In and out. In and-. Out. Quicker and quicker he breathes, each lung full of air compressing his chest from the inside out, determined to find a way out of his body that isn’t through his mouth or his nose. It shoves itself against his rib cage, rattling his heart and squeezing it until it’s too big for his skin and too small for his body to hold on to. It falls to the floor under his knees, spilling out onto the ground in the kind of way that can never really be recovered. Hands shaking, he reaches for your shoulders, tapping them, shaking them, determined to keep you awake and moving if it’s the last thing he does. The spirit isn’t even on his mind anymore, because there’s something more important to worry about; you.

Sam can hear Dean yelling something in the distance, something heavy and harsh and laden with curses. The kind he normally wouldn’t say around you even though you’re an adult. The kind that says he’s just as scared for you as Sam is, because something bad is happening to someone he loves, and he couldn’t prevent it. Sam knows there’s a harsh kind of vengeance in Dean’s blood right now, hand no doubt gripped tight around the lighter and another around his rock-salt gun as he digs up the bones. There’s a flicker of light when Dean drops the lighter into the ground, the pale colour of the flames only making your corpse seem more ashen-faced and cold, lips turning blue against the night air. You’re still breathing, and Sam counts each breath reverently, hands fluttering over you because he needs to keep them busy. He moves from your face down your body, checking and re-checking the state of your injuries, cataloguing them with the kind of careful precision that burns him from the inside out if he does it wrong or misses a spot. If he misjudges the condition you’re in, he’ll never forgive himself for it; he already won’t forgive himself for letting you get hurt like this.

The voices yelling in his head are loud. They scream your name, and Sam’s pretty sure half of them scream your name through his throat, the sounds raw and ragged and accompanied by rough pleas for your safety and promises you’ll be okay. His chest hurts, eyes burning with unshed tears, because he can’t let you see him cry. Not now, not when you need him to be strong enough for the both of you. He’ll cry later when you’re awake, and he’ll shamelessly let his tears track down his cheeks and drip into your hair. Now, he has to be strong, he has to be brave, he has to be what Jess made him promise to be for you. He has to be your saviour and your guardian angel, and he has to be the one bright light in the darkness of your life.

A scream rings out, one that sounds unearthly and harsh. It tears through the air like it’s ripping it apart at the seams, collapsing in on itself and echoing outward in the kind of death shriek of a dying spirit. Dean’s voice shouts something in triumph, boots scuffing on dirt as he kicks a bit over the dying embers. He keeps talking for Sam’s sake, voice getting louder and clearer as he enters the room you’re both in. Dean’s face goes pale at the sight of you on the floor, and even paler still at the sheer panic written across Sam’s features. It takes a lot to phase Sam, especially now given all that he’s been through. And this rocks him to his very core.

Sam’s arms are warm where he scoops you up, cradling you against his chest with your head over his heart. He runs, as fast as he dares to run without jostling you too much. You’re not awake anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t feel any pain, and that doesn’t mean Sam won’t stop acting like you are. He talks to you as he runs, murmuring softly to you the same way he did when you were small and woke him up when you had bad dreams. He’d cradle you then too, running a hand through your hair and talking to you for hours until you fell back asleep against his chest with a tiny hand clenched into the fabric of his shirt. Now, your hands rest uselessly over your stomach, bouncing when Sam takes a longer stride and hits the ground harder. He rests a hand over your head when he bundles you into the back seat of the Impala, stripping off his jacket and pressing it against your wound. He slides in beside you, your head on his lap and his hand in your hair, keeping pressure on the jacket over your wound while Dean drives as fast as the car will let him go.

Your bedroom in the bunker is quiet, the only sounds coming from your and Sam’s breathing, and the persistent hum of the ancient heater. The pipes in the walls spring to life briefly when Dean showers, the click of water starting to rush through the metal making Sam jump in his seat at the side of your bed. He’s taken a chair hostage from the kitchen, pulling it through the halls and setting it beside your bed, angled so that he can see the doorway and keep an eye over your sleeping form. You’re sleeping for real, he knows. Not the unconsciousness from earlier; this is true sleep, and he knows by the way your breaths have stayed steady but slowly become full. No more stutter on the inhale, no more fluttering air on the exhale. A proper breath, full in its entirety, passing lightly through your nose with a hint of a sound. A light, breathy sound, one that’s not properly snoring but isn’t nothing. The same kind of sound Jess made in her sleep when Sam had her tucked against his chest after night spent studying.

Immediately after settling you in under the blankets, Sam went on a mission. First, a thicker blanket, because your room has a habit of being colder than the rest of the bunker for reasons he hasn’t quite figured out yet. Second, a glass of water and painkillers, which he sets carefully on the table beside you. They taste awful and Sam knows it, but he also know given the extent of your bruising, they’ll probably be the first thing you ask for once you can formulate proper questions. Third, at Dean’s insistence he takes the quickest shower known to mankind and gives himself the grace of putting on clothes that aren’t stained with dirt and blood. Washing the pink down the drain feels like he’s getting stabbed all over again, but the moment it’s gone brings him the kind of relief he never thought he’d feel again.

Now, he sits vigil at your bedside. Not even a book in hand, because reading means taking his eyes off you, and taking his eyes off you means he could miss the moment you wake up. He doesn’t consider the alternative, because he has to believe that you’ll wake up. You always do, he reasons with himself. You’re a Winchester. Winchesters don’t get the blessing of death so young. Each rise and fall of your now covered chest is tracked by his eyes, Sam’s hand occasionally drifting toward your wrist and taking your pulse. Counting the numbers steady in his head, an eye on his watch to count a whole minute. It spikes once, somewhere around five in the morning, and Sam murmurs to you under his breath like he did when you were young until the furrow in your brow disappears and whatever dream plagued you has passed.

With nothing else to do but watch you sleep, Sam talks. He doesn’t dare fall asleep; not tonight. Not when you’re vulnerable to your injury, and not when he’s vulnerable to his emotions. He couldn’t sleep even if he tried, his mind running a hundred miles an hour and throwing the worst at him from every angle. So, he talks. He tells you things he knows he’s told you before, and he tells you things he’s kept secret and will keep secret until the day he dies. He tells you things that would make you cry if you were awake, and he tells you the little things from when you were young that would make your face flush red in embarrassment. He tells them because he has to. He needs the silence in the room to understand how important you are to him. He needs the bunker to understand it has to wake you up at some point and bring you back to him. Sam needs his daughter, because without you, he’s not much of anything.

He tells you first about when Jess told him she was pregnant. A mistake, he knows for a fact. They were in college for heaven’s sake, neither of them had the time for a baby. But that wasn’t going to stop him from loving both his girls with everything he has, because Sam is nothing if not a lover. He tells you about how he cared for Jess, making sure he attended lectures in her absence and brought her review packets and textbook work and set up exams so that she could take them without having to go very far. He tells you about how he sat beside her just like this in the hospital, watching the both of you sleep after you were born. He tells you about bringing you back to the apartment, and how much it meant that his college friends were there for him and Jess; helping out when there was homework and studying to do, keeping you entertained while they wrote exams, bringing you little gifts when they saw you.

Sam doesn’t tell you about the fire, because he can’t bring himself to talk about it right now. The fire that killed his lover has no place in the room today, not when you’re lying there just as immobile as she was on the ceiling. Instead, he tells you about the first night he took you on the road with Dean, the night after the fire. Where he sat with you in his lap the entire drive, and worried incessantly about how he was going to explain a nearly seven-month-old baby to Dean. Dean didn’t seem to care very much beyond a bit of casual teasing.

Then, he worried about how he was supposed to tell his dad about you. John, the man Sam swore he’d never become. The man who responded to everything with anger, the one who never explained why he was angry, the one who let everyone flounder in the confusion of being in trouble and never knowing why. Everything Sam hates about himself, he hates because they’re the parts that are most like John. Everything Sam tolerates about himself, and everything he loves about you, he loves because they’re nothing like his father. They’re every bit like Jess, or maybe him, or even a little bit of Dean. The parts that reminds him that he’s more than his father’s failures.

After that, he hops around a bit. He doesn’t follow a timeline anymore, because everything he tells you doesn’t need a date and time to mean something. Sam talks about all the late-night conversations he had with Dean about you. About whether it was better to leave you with Bobby, even though it tore him up inside to let you out of his sight. You, the last living proof of Jess. The part of his life he treasured the most. He talks about all the times he made Dean promise that no matter what, you come first. All the times he sat Dean down and said that if the both of you are in danger, Dean has to promise to get you safe before he even thinks about coming back for Sam. No heroics to try and save the both of you at once; just a solid promise that you come first, always. He tells you about bringing you to school and the joy he got from meeting your friends, and then he tells you about how much it hurt him to have to take you away from those friends. He talks about all the memories of your childhood with the people who meant the most; Bobby, the roadhouse gang to an extent, the tiniest bit of joy John got from learning he was a grandfather. A poor excuse for one, but still one, nonetheless.

He talks the entire night, hoping that his words are enough to keep away the shadowed parts of the room that threaten to engulf your figure and never let it go again. He sits with his elbows on his knees and his hands laced together and he sits until his back starts getting sore. And then he ignores it and sits longer, because you still haven’t woken up yet, and he needs to be beside you when you do. He gets up once to refill his own glass of water, and he’s only gone for as short as he possibly can be. He watches your body for any signs of waking. Every twitch of your hand, every shift of your leg against the bedsheets, every sigh from your mouth when you settle that gets closer and closer to the kind of sigh that wakes you up every morning.

At some point, he grows restless, shifting in his chair with the kind of nervous energy that comes from a man who’s been counting the hours you sleep and is getting worried you’re not waking up fast enough. He knows its morning because Dean shows up with a paper plate and some half-burnt toast, nudging it in Sam’s direction with the authority of someone who won’t leave the room until the toast is gone. Dean hovers in the corner as Sam eats, prompting him with small talk that Sam barely bothers entertaining. He gives just enough of an answer that Dean won’t press, but keep it vague, because even now he doesn’t need his brother to know everything going on inside his head.

“Should get outta that chair, Sammy,” Dean comments.

“Not until-.”

“Not until she wakes up, you said that.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

Dean shrugs, serious. “I know you weren’t. You’re still gonna wear a hole in the floor if y’keep bouncin’ your leg like that.”

Sam’s leg stills, the energy dispelling into his hands that start twisting nervously in his lap. Dean sighs, grabbing his brother by the shoulders and dragging him upright.

“C’mon, just...just stand up for a few minutes,” Dean says, quiet. “You’ve been sittin’ there all night.”

Slow, Sam stretches his aching limbs, stiff at the joints from hours of sitting cramped in the chair that’s too small for him. A yawn escapes him when he puts his arms over his head and stretches out his back, Dean’s expression turning sympathetic in response.

“Did y’sleep at all?” Dean asks, hand on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam’s look tells him everything he needs to hear. He’s expecting Dean to force him into the chair or maybe drag him to his own room and push him into the bed. He’s expecting a lecture about sleep deprivation being no use to you if Sam drops from exhaustion before you even wake up. He’s expecting something, anything. A shout, a curse, even a slap across the face.

Instead, Dean murmurs his name and tugs him in by the shoulders, big hands wrapping around his back. Dean doesn’t move his hands, doesn’t rub circles or trace patterns or even pat his back when a tear escapes his eye. He just stands, lightly rocking them side to side, holding Sam tight to his chest in the quiet of the room. Slowly, Sam exhales a shuddering breath into the room, giving the air something to sing about. A breath of exhaustion, of sorrow, tinged at the edges with guilt. And Dean sees right through him.

“Don’t start thinkin’ about it, Sammy,” he warns.

“’M not thinking anything.”

“You are, I can hear it in that giant head of yours.”

Sam gives him the tiniest hint of a smile. “Should’ve been faster.”

Dean’s expression crumples. “Sammy, don’t.”

“I should’ve.”

“It wouldn’t’ve mattered. Bastard was invisible the whole time, you couldn’t’ve shot it.”

“I could’ve tried.”

“You gotta stop dragging yourself for things like that, man,” Dean pleads. “It happened. It’s over. She’ll wake up and it’ll be like nothing changed.”

“Everything changed, Dean. I broke a promise.”

Dean frowns, pulling away and holding Sam at arm’s length. “Promise? What promise?”

Sam swallows, thick. “I promised Jess I’d keep her safe.”

“You did.”

Sam’s head shakes violently. “No, Dean. I didn’t. She’s lying there because I messed up. She’s lying there because I couldn’t do what I promised her I’d do.”

The end of his sentence rises, voice getting louder in his frustration. Dean shushes him with a murmur and a gesture of his hand, jutting his head in your direction.

“Okay, Sammy. Okay. I get it. But she’s alive because of you. Don’t forget that.”

Dean gives him one last hug, then leaves the room. Sam stays frozen in place, eyes watching the drag path Dean tracked to the door, the handle rattling lightly as it closes behind him. Slowly, his feet wander back to the chair at the bedside, big hands smoothing down the blankets around you shoulders and grabbing tight to your smaller one.

“Hey sweetheart. I’m sorry about all this. I don’t know if you can hear me, but-.” He pauses, sharp. “I’m sorry. I promised to protect you, and- and now you’re hurt ‘cause I didn’t do that. You gotta wake up for me, okay? I need-. I-. You gotta wake up. Please.”

Squeezing your hand once again, he lets it drop to the mattress, fingers still lingering on your skin. Your fingers twitch in reply, giving him hope that you’re approaching consciousness, but you still don’t open your eyes. He takes your pulse again, watches your chest rise and fall, analysing you. He can tell you’re slowly drifting awake; it’s just a matter of how much time he has until your eyes finally flutter open. One quick decision and he’s on his feet, walking as fast as he can to pick up some clothes for you to wear if you’re cold. A Stanford hoodie that used to be his and then got stolen by Jess before you claimed it. Sweatpants that Sam bought you years ago that never managed to fit you right yet somehow ended up being the comfiest pair you own. When you wake up, you’ll judge if you’re well enough to handle getting into other clothes.

When your eyes finally creak open, it’s midafternoon. The door to your room is slightly ajar, light from the hallway spilling in through the gap. It trails across the floor in thin stripes of warmth, yellow and gold and some dark kind of orange; the bunker lighting, you recognize. You’re home. You’re under a blanket that’s a little thin for your liking, and you can feel what seems to be a thicker one bundled up at your feet. Perhaps waiting for permission from your body to cover you or waiting for hands other than yours to move it on your behalf. Upon careful inspection, you realize you can move all your limbs, although moving anything comes with a sharp sting of pain up your side, the crinkling of bandages alerting you to the notion that you should stay as still as you possibly can.

Turning your head is slow. There’s a crick in your neck that’s getting harsher by the minute, eating up your spinal cord and tearing into the muscles of your back. Clearly, you’ve been still for way too long, confined to your back with barely any room to move from it. Finally, your eyes land on a familiar shape hunched in a chair. Long legs stretched out across the floor, socked feet with one toe sticking out through a hole in the right sock. Rough jeans, tattered and worn with a crudely made patch over one knee. Dark shirt and light flannel covering a broad chest with arms crossed in front of it, head tipped down and chin rising and falling with the motions. Dark hair and scruffy stubble covering the barely sleeping face that only belongs to one man you know.

Clearing your throat and wincing at the harsh ache in it, you tip your chin up toward him.

“Dad?”

Your voice is so quiet you’re not sure how he heard you, but he’s been tuned to you since the day you were born. Sam’s head shoots upright, hands scrambling to hold on to yours as his eyes find yours fully open and staring at him.

“Hi,” he murmurs, hands squeezing yours. “How’re you feeling?”

“Hurts,” you whisper.

He gives you a sad smile. “I bet.”

Nudging painkillers and water toward you, he leans forward so that his knees are resting on your mattress. His hand falls to the top of your head, stroking your hair as you take the medication, cradling it as you fall back onto the pillows, drained.

“Dad, what-.”

“Shh. It’s okay, kiddo.”

“I know it’s okay. I wanna know what happened.”

“You sure? I don’t wanna scare you.”

You give a soft grin. “You won’t scare me. I’m alive, see? It’s fine.”

“I- I know that. I just-.”

Your eyes meet his, and you can see the residual traces of fear locked in them. “Did I scare you?”

Sam frowns. “What?”

“When I went down. Did I scare you?”

Sam’s hand tightens on yours, then relaxes, like he’s reminding himself whatever is playing in his head isn’t real.

“Yeah, sweetheart. You did. You scared me so fucking much.”

You look up at him with those eyes; the ones that have all of Jess’s beauty and all of Sam’s persuasion.

“I’m sorry.”

He laughs, the sound broken. “Oh, god, don’t apologize for that.”

“I’m…sorry…?” you say, realizing halfway through that you’re still apologizing.

For the first time all day, Sam gets a real smile across his face, dimple finally greeting you underneath the scruff on his jaw. You laugh a little too, stopping immediately when your spine starts to ache all the way across the muscles.

“Careful,” Sam warns, steadying you.

“Did I break my ribs?” you ask, groaning in frustration.

“Not this time. Your spine might be black and blue for a month though.”

“What else?” you mumble bitterly.

Sam sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Honestly? I’m not sure. I had to stitch up your side, but…does anything else hurt?”

You pause, assessing. “My head, I think. I remember hitting it.”

Sam nods. “You did.”

You’re quiet for a moment, letting Sam rock slightly in his chair. Tipping it back on the back legs, letting it fall forward and catching it before it can thud on the ground.

“You hungry?” Sam asks, quiet. “I can make you something.”

You shrug as best you can. “I dunno. Can you-.” You gesture to the blanket. “Can you put that on, please?”

Sam nods, taking the edge of the blanket in his hands and draping it over your body. You sigh when the warmth stays trapped against your skin, settling deeper into your pillow. You remember those same hands smoothing blankets over you when you got sick as a kid, tucking pillows under your head and taking your temperature with the back of a hand pressed to your skin. You remember those hands picking you up and carrying you around, and when you got too big to be carried on the regular, those hands would rest on your shoulders and keep you from running off on him. Clasped around your hand at the park, walking with you to motel check-out desks and placing bandages over scraped knees in parking lots.

“Better?” Sam asks when you’re settled.

“Mhm. Better.”

“Good.”

Sam’s hands fiddle nervously in his lap, clearly debating what to say next. He takes a deep breath, one that makes his lungs feel like rubber balloons, and exhales slow and heavy, the kind that says he has words to say but doesn’t know how to string them together.

“I, uh,” he starts, eloquently. “I wanted to apologize.”

You freeze.

“Why?” you ask, wary.

“Because I broke our promise. I broke your mother’s promise.”

Your brows scrunch together, genuine confusion painted on your features.

“What promise?”

“I promised you both that I’d keep you safe.”

You nod. “I know.”

“And I didn’t do that. And I’m sorry. I’m so unbelievably sorry.”

“Dad-.”

“When you went down, all I could think about was what was gonna happen to you. And I froze. For a minute, I just froze. And I let you get hurt. And I’m sorry that I let you down like that.”

“It’s not your fault, you know that, right?”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m supposed to look out for you. Protect you. Keep you safe. ‘Nd I didn’t and now look where we are.”

“We’re home.”

“We’re- what?”

“You said look where we are. We’re home. We’re safe. I’m okay.”

“But I promised…” he says, trailing off quietly.

“I know what you promised. You didn’t break it, trust me. If you did, I wouldn’t be lying here feeling like I got ran over by a truck. If you didn’t protect me, I’d be dead, Dad.”

“I-.”

You shift, letting him see you properly.

“When I was lying there and you told me I was going to be okay, I believed you. I always do. Because I know if you’re there, it’ll always be okay. That means more to me than this one thing does.”

Sam nods, eyes looking a little teary.

“I just worry because-.” He swallows thick around the emotion. “Because I couldn’t save Jess. And I feel awful for it because she was supposed to be there for all of it.”

“What happened to Mom isn’t your fault either.”

“I never said it was my fault. I just said I couldn’t save her. I feel like- like if I can keep you from ever getting hurt, I’ll…I don’t know. Avenge myself or something. Make up for it.”

Your features soften, heart melting a bit at the admission. Sam’s an emotional guy, and he’s never tried to hide any of that from you. But something about this raw honesty hits you hard in the chest, punching the air out of your lungs. Neither of you speak for a while. Sam just sits beside you, scrubbing a heavy hand down his face and keeping close. Keeping you steady, because putting on a calm front for you is his way of keeping himself under control. He doesn’t let more than a few tears fall, but it’s cathartic anyway.

“Hey, dad?” you say, breaking the silence.

“Hm? What’s wrong?”

You smile. “Nothing’s wrong. ‘M just hungry, that’s all.”

Sam’s eyes light up. “That’s a good sign. What do you want?”

“Dunno,” you muse. “Soup’s good.”

“I’ll bring you soup. Want anything else?”

You shake your head.

“I’ll just tell Dean you’re awake,” Sam says.

“Okay,” you whisper, settling into bed.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” Sam says. “I love you so much, sweetheart.”

“Love you,” you murmur.

Sam bends quick to press a soft kiss to your hair, thumb brushing soft against your shoulder.

“I’ll help you get a sweater on after, okay?” he asks.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re just a child. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

“I’m a whole adult,” you whine.

Sam grins. “You’re still my kid. Sit still while I get your soup, okay?”

“Okay.”

Warm soup, warm blankets, Sam’s warm hands helping you slip the warm hoodie over your shoulder. Dean’s cheery voice checking in on you when he gets in the room, poking fun at Sam for being so worried. His eyes hold the same concern as his brother though, because you really did scare the both of them. Sam’s warm arms hugging you close when he helps you settle in for bed, squeezing you as tight as he dares with one hand cradling your head like he did when you were a little girl scared of storms. To him, you really are still just his kid. And he’ll love you like it for the rest of time.

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