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I dropped another glass. I don’t know how I didn’t see it coming, my hands were shaking again, but I just dropped it. It wasn’t really like those slow-motion drama scenes where the poor girl’s eyes widen in shock as she tries to grope for the falling glass; it’s always more of a split-second deal where you’re holding it, and then you’re not. This time, I shifted on my feet a bit to gain some bearing of what had just happened, and I stepped on a shard. Having dropped the object and stained the carpet with burgundy blood, it wasn’t looking good for me.
The story of my father’s glass wasn’t an enticing one, and if I had a say I would make it clear how pointless it is for him to carry on pining over an old pile of sand blown into a cup. But, of course, it had belonged to his wife, my mother, and as such held a very special place in his heart. Whenever he went for the wine after the whiskey ran out, he was always sure to use that glass.
Of course I should have theoretically known how to defend myself, being a hunter’s daughter, but how easy would it have been to look up at my father and say that I’d had enough? I don’t know what would have come of that, but the first thought; I haven’t had enough, kept coming back. The man who towered over me was the man who raised me from birth, who always powered through and supported his daughter despite his wife’s death and his grief and drinking. He protected me for my entire life. He never allowed anything to hurt me, and he used to call me things like ‘precious’ and ‘darling.’ I couldn’t accept that this strong man had now become the accuser, the one who hurt me, the one who tore me down.
I felt my own foundation cave in on itself under the pressure of the eyes on me. I tried to hide-I could never hide. Maybe he’d had enough to drink-
“Y/N.” Sometimes his whisper could smart with the power of a thousand shouts, this one in particular. I turned obediently with head bowed; eye contact was better left to his discretion. “I have a couple questions for you if you don’t mind,” He leered. Sometimes I could take solace in knowing the extent of his inebriation; it would weaken him taken too far and he would pass out, but tonight he was only on his third whiskey. No, it was too early. He still had enough lucidity left to abominate me; after all, it was indisputably my fault that his wife had died. I had killed her on my way out, so to speak.
“Do you know who that wine glass belonged to, Y/N?” His voice was still deathly soft, but it made my legs quake.
“Yessir.” The standard reply.
“And are you aware of the implications of your actions today?”
“Yessir. Sorry, sir.”
“Sorry my ass!” It had gotten so loud, and like that, I hit the floor, trying to cover my face from another blow, but I immediately regretted my concern for my face when I remembered the glass shards. Still strewn haphazardly about the floor, they now cut into my knees and my hands. I was dealt a couple more bleeders: not good. The carpet was done-for, no doubt.
“Now look and see what you’ve done you stupid bitch!” He was so close to me now, close enough to let me feel the droplets of saliva that spewed out with his screams into my face. “I leave you alone for one fucking moment and you go and fuck everything up all over again!” He landed a shattering kick to my side when he stood up. That was going to bruise.
“I want you to get the fuck out of my goddamn house.” His voice trembled with anger as he began to pace around me. “It should have been you, Y/N. Not your mom. Never your mom.” The tears had started for him. If there was one thing that angered him almost as much as I did, it was his own inability to hold back his tears, often when I should have been crying. Too often did the tears flow from both of us, and it was terrifying. In that moment, I felt the uncontrollable urge to scream, to shriek and howl until it ended, but no one was close enough to hear me. Sometimes I lost control in what father called ‘temper tantrums,’ and screamed if only for a second. In return I screamed for hours.
Since I held it back this time, he only gave one final stomp onto the fingers of my right hand where he left imprints of the soles of his boots, which tingled with pain. I wasn’t immediately sure whether something had cracked.
Occasionally, I would write an entry in my journal saying that I had gone blind. Part of me believes that if that were the literal case, I would be led out back in front of a shotgun. When I went blind, I couldn’t see three feet in front of me through the tears. It was pathetic-I couldn’t even pull it together for a moment to find my way to a safer place, where I could wipe the tears away. My throat felt like it was swelling, like there was a snake wrapping itself around my neck and squeezing with all its might. Swallowing brought enough pain to bring more tears, and the tears brought a shuddering breath, and another, and another. All I could do was breathe while I was blind with the snake around my throat.
He left me there for a time. I wasn’t sure if it had been ten minutes or ten hours following the incident when there was a knock at the door. This meant trouble; father hadn’t bothered to remove the mess and guests were quite averted to coming across broken bodies of teenage girls in the middle of the front hall.
I heard father swearing explosively from upstairs, his footsteps becoming louder and louder until I saw one of his bare feet rise up to step over the obstacle of my neck.
“Now you listen to me,” He whispered without turning to face me. “If you think you’ll get away with making a single sound, you’re deadly wrong. You are not to move, and you are not to speak.”
The snake was around my throat again, so I only nodded while reigning in my unacceptably ragged breathing.
There were seldom few who frequented the house regularly. Maybe the mailman would knock to deliver a fragile package, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses would come around, but father kept to himself. He had told me once when I was little that friends weren’t really friends; that they would only bite you on the ass in the end. Therefore, voices that came after the knocking were never familiar, but there was something different about this one.
“How are you, Mr. Y/L/N? Agents Ritterhoff and Freud. Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”
Oh, yes he would mind, I thought.
“Oh yes I would mind,” Father barked. “Your names are total bullshit, you know that? You’re hunters, not fucking actors.”
- Father hunted alone, but he always bragged that he could spot one a mile away.
Another voice piped up, this one gruff and deep. “You got us. Great, well let’s start this thing over again, I’m-“
“Dean Winchester and he’s the goliath brother. Shame, I thought you two were dead along with your daddy.”
“Still kickin’,” Came the sarcastic reply. “Look, Mr. Y/L/N, we could really use a little bit of your help. We found you in dad’s contacts and we didn’t have any other options. We got a case with a Shojo in the neighborhood. ‘You been working on that?”
“Story’s a load of horseshit. Already checked it out.” My father wasn’t a very good liar. It had been ages since he mustered up the effort to take a job.
“Um, well we think differently sir,” The deeper voice laughed nervously. “Please, would you let us in only for a minute so we can ask you a few questions?”
I knew the argument wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Father would sooner put a bullet through their brains than allow a couple of outsiders into the house. I was way too nearby to pull that off.
I kept my spot on the floor and waited for father to slam the door in their faces, and I kept quiet. Something behind me didn’t, though. It was almost as though a bird had gotten in somehow; but the flapping sound came and ceased too quickly. I prayed it was only in my mind; it still hurt too much to turn my head to see.
It hurt even more when I flinched at the sudden shout from nearby.
“Sam, Dean!” The man walked into my line of sight wearing a tan trench coat. He knelt beside me, and I didn’t know whether I owed it to this stranger to shout for help again for shower him in gratitude. Without a friend calling to them, those Winchesters would never have pushed past my father. Father wasn’t going down without resistance, and I wasn’t surprised when I heard the telltale noises of a fistfight break out. The man in the trench coat looked into my eyes, and in his there was pity, but something was so unnerving; I couldn’t put my finger on it. He tried to take me into his arms but thankfully stopped when I whimpered in pain.
“Did your father do this to you?” He asked in a whisper. I gave the best nod I could, and the unnerving quality in his blue eyes flared into momentary rage.
“Cas? Cas, what happened?” Came approaching voices. When the sources turned the corner, you saw the man previously labeled ‘goliath’ followed closely by a shorter man with striking, angry eyes. He seemed quick to draw assumptions, and his eyes became all the more angrier when they met mine.
“That son of a bitch,” He muttered. “You can heal her, right Cas?” Cas nodded.
“Yes, Dean. Has Mr. Y/L/N been incapacitated?”
“Yeah, Sam knocked the bastard out cold.”
Satisfied with the answer, Cas looked back down into my eyes. I was going blind again, but I could see enough to sense two fingers being lifted above my eyes. When they touched my forehead, the feeling was otherworldly.
An initial heat emanating from Cas’ fingertips was frightening; it pulsed under my skin with a needlelike quality, but I relaxed when the needles disappeared. The pulses turned into, for lack of a better word, rays of sunlight. They were warm without burning, and soothing to a degree that made me believe my wounds may have been closing before their eyes. My blindness was different. It felt as though someone had kissed the tears from my face and dried the ones to come. Even in fear, the fingers felt like a blanket wrapping around me, giving me my own safe haven away from pain. My vision had turned bright, and the man above me shone like a star. Whether his brilliance came naturally or from my imagination as reward for his aid, I didn’t know, nor did I care. The warmth began to dissipate, but the wake felt just as heavenly. I was washed in health and strength. I didn’t think even my father had come face-to-face with a being like this.
“Thank you,” I whispered. There was no more blood in my mouth, and my teeth no longer ached. Cas just nodded slightly and I swiveled my now flexible neck to face my other rescuers. Sam and Dean, you remembered.
“Don’t worry kid, you’re with us now.” The words couldn’t fix the past. Father had torn me down, down to the last shred of hope, but I still believed this man. I was with them now.