A Night Like Any Other
word count: 2339
characters: professor jensen, hana jensen
synopsis: jensen comes home from a particularly bad fight and his daughter helps him take care of his wounds (both emotional and physical...?)
"I'll be fine. Go back to bed—I'll join you in a little bit," he reassures again. She squeezes him in return and lets out a few more quiet sobs. After some time she breaks away and sniffs, nodding minutely. She regards him with an unreadable expression and stands up to return to her bedroom, pointedly leaving the door open. Jensen stares blankly at the empty doorway for a moment before he looks down at the first aid supplies on the floor. This is gonna take a while.
It's not until he gets inside the front door that he stops to catch his breath finally, stars beginning to overtake his vision. Ideally he would like to go to the kitchen or bathroom sink to begin tending to the wound on his forehead which has been steadily weeping for the past hour, but the second he tries to take another step his knees fold beneath him and he has to press his back against the wall so he doesn’t fall as he slides to the floor. He isn't entirely sure if the breath that escapes him comes out as more of a sigh or a whimper because his ears have filled with static all of a sudden.
His bruised hands lay motionless in his lap, and he watches numbly as they catch the stray drops of blood that slide down the side of his face. Jensen is certain he’s made a new enemy, but he assures himself that the man won't be a problem from now on—anyone who survives a fight with his face looking like that would be stupid to try and cross his opponent again.
He's not entirely sure how much time passes, but he eventually hears shuffling from Hana's room and his stomach drops a few centimeters; evidently he had been making a great deal of noise if he'd managed to wake her up. He lets the uninjured side of his face fall into one of his hands and sighs despondently, steeling himself emotionally for what's about to happen. Not long after, he hears the bedroom door open and looks up as Hana creeps down the hallway.
In the dim moonlight seeping in through the window her face is pale and frozen with anxiety, and, despite her careful steps, he swears he can see her hands shaking. He shifts slightly as if to show her that he's fine, but regrets it when the motion sends a lance of pain through his aching head. He doubles forward with a groan, his knees drawing up toward his chest and he hears Hana's footsteps quicken to meet him. So much for appearances.
"You're hurt..." is all she manages to say, voice quiet and wobbly as if speaking any louder would break it completely. It barely cuts through the static in Jensen’s ears and he half wishes he’s imagining it.
"It's nothing I can't handle, sweetie. You can go back to bed," he reassures her, forcing steadiness into his voice so he sounds more convincing. He even minutely turns his head so he can look her in the eyes as he says it. He finds this, too, to be a mistake when he gets the full view of her face; she looks positively heartbroken.
"No, I- I wanna help you clean up... The wound will get infected if you don’t take care of it..." There's definitely a silent, ‘and I don't think you're in a state to do it yourself,’ that seems to stick in her throat but Jensen hears it anyway. He always does. It hurts to see such worry etched into her youthful features, to hear the strain in her voice; no 15 year old should have to witness this, to experience what she has in the last 5 years.
"I'm sorry..." is all he can respond with.
Hana stands abruptly and beelines for the bathroom where she disappears for a few minutes. He can hear the rustling of her frantic, clumsy movements as she gathers everything she needs, which only makes his heart ache more. He silently berates himself for not being able to stand up and help her, much less do the work himself, but his vision refuses to stop swimming and he isn't sure he can remain upright for more than half a second. Instead he continues to clutch his head in pain and wait for his daughter to return.
In time she does, though his vision has become so blurred that he can't really discern what all she's brought, his struggle only made worse by the fact that she's turned the hallway light on. He closes his eyes again. He only realizes what she’s intending to do when she gingerly pulls his hand away from his face and begins wiping the blood from his temple with a damp cloth.
There’s almost an unnerving sense of expertise to what she does—a methodical, practiced series of actions, only achieved through repetition. It really shouldn’t be a surprise to him, given that he may as well have been in this exact position about half a dozen times before, but some protective part of his brain has kept those moments locked away until just now. The realization sends a sickening pang of guilt right to the pit of his stomach and he suppresses a flinch. Even so, she works almost painfully slowly, as if she’s afraid to break him. (Though, whether that be mentally or physically remains unclear to him.) Her efforts seem to be in vain—Jensen isn't sure how much of this he can logistically take before he completely breaks down crying in front of her. He chooses a moment between waves of pain to open his eyes and take her hand in his own.
"You know you don't have to do this..." he begins, "I can take care of it, I promise. But thank you." He pulls her hand to his mouth and places a gentle kiss to the back of it. The tears that seem to have been pooling in the corners of her eyes finally spill forth and roll down her cheeks. She hiccups out a sob that sounds like it’s been building for a while. (Exactly how long, Jensen isn’t quite sure, but it could be anywhere from minutes to years at this point.)
"I don't want you to keep getting hurt. I don't wanna lose you, too..." Her voice comes out weak and cracked, and she sounds so young. Jensen realizes he honestly doesn't have a good response for her. An apology is the next best thing he can think of:
"I'm sorry, Hana," he says, hearing it echo in his head again and again and again like a mantra. He would repeat it out loud if he could, but his voice is about to give way entirely. Despite the throbbing inside his skull he leans forward and pulls Hana into a shaky hug, running a hand through her sleep-tangled curls.
"I'll be fine. Go back to bed—I'll join you in a little bit," he reassures again. She squeezes him in return and lets out a few more quiet sobs. After some time she breaks away and sniffs, nodding minutely. She regards him with an unreadable expression and stands up to return to her bedroom, pointedly leaving the door open. Jensen stares blankly at the empty doorway for a moment before he looks down at the first aid supplies on the floor. This is gonna take a while.
Indeed it does take a while; the act of standing up alone takes a frankly absurd amount of time, his legs trembling from weakness and his head spinning anew. He all but blindly limps to the bathroom, the light blurring his vision painfully once again, desperately clutching the bloodstained cloth in one hand and the wall in the other.
When he finally makes it in front of the mirror with the light in the hallway dimly illuminating it, the face that pathetically greets him is… about what he had expected; a massive bruise is beginning to bloom plum across his eye, joined by a chorus of sickish bumps and scrapes across his skin. The one thing he isn’t expecting, however, is the stream of tears that drips down his face. He isn’t sure when he started crying. Distantly he hopes it was after Hana had gone back to her room. Jensen knows the pain of seeing a parent cry, perhaps a little too well. She shouldn’t have to deal with that on top of… everything.
He decides he needs to make quick work (or, more realistically, not slow work) of his face so he can apologize again while Hana is still awake. Thankfully, after having done this many times, his movements are practiced enough that he doesn’t need to think much about what he’s doing. He lets himself dissociate from his body enough to ignore the pain as he works. If anything, it allows him more time to indulgently steep in the guilt of the night’s events, letting its familiar weight tug uncomfortably at his chest and replace the physical pain in his body. By the time he comes back to himself there are bandages on the biggest of his wounds and the dirt is washed away from his skin. He shakes a few painkillers from the bottle in the medicine cabinet and swallows them dry, sighing slightly.
When he’s sure he’s done everything he can for the moment, he creeps back to Hana’s bedroom and gently knocks on the doorframe a few times to make his presence known. Hana is lying on her bed facing away from him, and for a moment he thinks she might be asleep. He’s about to mentally berate himself again for waking her up, but his thought process is interrupted when she lets out a reply so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it.
“Come in,” she murmurs.
“Are you okay?” he asks cautiously, quietly, into the space of her room. Hana turns over to face him, cheeks still drenched in tears. It looks like she hasn’t stopped crying since they parted. Hana remains silent, only offering a vague shrug in response. Jensen sighs through his nose and crosses the room to lean over the bed and run a soothing hand through her hair. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he offers, realizing that he says it more in the hopes that he won’t have to explain himself.
“I don’t know, I’m just… tired,” she says, and Jensen is struck by just how much she sounds like him when she says it. No doubt she learned that from his own avoidant tactics. A trait so irritating could never come from her mother, his mind unhelpfully offers, only from such an irritating father.
“Forgive me for assuming, but I don’t think this is what ‘just tired’ looks like. If there’s something on your mind I’ll listen to it,” he prompts, hoping she can express herself enough for him to feel like he’s helped in some way.
“You always tell me that, but you never know what to say,” she huffs, turning away from him once again. An uncomfortable flush crawls up the back of his neck as he realizes she isn’t necessarily wrong. In Jensen’s defense, he likes to think that he at least tries to come up with the right words, but his years of experience as a writer always seem to fail him in times like these. With effort he kneels down so he can sit on the floor next to the bed, and even though Hana isn’t facing him, he averts his eyes and lightly clears his throat.
“Hana, I said I would listen to what you want to say. Just getting the words out in the open might help you feel better. Or—lighter. It’s not… healthy to keep holding on to the thoughts that weigh you down.” The second the words leave his mouth, he can’t suppress the physical cringe that pinches his expression at the sheer hypocrisy of what he’s just said. Hana fully props herself up on the bed as she turns again to face him with an equally incredulous expression. “Okay, yeah, sorry. What I mean to say is that… I’ll hear you out if you want to talk. Or… If you don’t, I can go. Anything I can do to help,” he appends, hoping his desperation isn’t too evident from his voice.
Hana’s face crumbles slightly in a way Jensen is completely unprepared for.
“So then you’ll just leave? I don’t… I don’t want that… I don’t know what I want…” It comes out watery and strained and Jensen can her eyes welling up again. He’s failed again.
“O-oh, I… Hana, I’m sorry…” Haltingly, he draws her closer and kisses her forehead as his chest tightens with guilt again. “I’ll stay right here with you. I’m here…” he whispers into her hair.
“I just…” she murmurs into the space between them, and takes a breath before continuing, “I get so scared when you come home like this… And I’ve…” She pauses again as the fresh tears roll down her cheeks and she shudders. “I’ve been missing Mom a lot…” Her lip quivers as she appears to be trying to hold back even more tears, but a sob escapes nonetheless.
At the mention of Molly, Jensen’s eyes widen in the darkness and he feels like the wind has been punched out of him for the second time that night. Truthfully, he had been doing everything in his power to not think about Molly lately, intentionally numbing the pain in his heart in the pursuit of strengthening himself, but speaking of her now seems to rend the bleeding valley back open. He feels the room spinning about the corners again, right along with his violently spiralling thoughts as 5 years of tormented visions of his wife’s death crash down around him all at once. He doesn’t even realize his embrace around Hana has grown shaky until she clutches at the back of his shirt and makes a quiet utterance:
“...Dad…?” She sounds almost frightened and the sensation is just enough to bring Jensen back to himself slightly. He lets out a pained gasp.
“I’m sorry, my little flower…” The nickname slips out before he realizes what he’s saying. He hugs Hana tighter. “I’m so sorry…” Her face is pressed to his chest and he feels like he can’t hold her close enough. This time he feels the tears as they spill from his eyes. “I’m so sorry…”
