John
Warnings: blood, medical procedures, anxiety, alcohol
The door slammed open and Dee reached under the pillow for the knife she kept there. "Sam, pack the car. Dee, with me," her father's gruff voice filled the night. She re-sheathed the knife and put it on the bed for her brother to pack, turned on the light, and shook the sleep from his little body. She didn't see what her father had grabbed in the meantime, but when she got up to follow him his hands were full and he was headed to the bathroom.
She followed him into the room and found him leaning on the sink, staring into the mirror. His face was hard and angry. He tried to rub some black grime off his face, but his hands just left a darker stain. He stood, wincing a little, then pulled his shirt off, wincing more. Running from under his right arm, around to his back, was a deep gash. Dee let out an audible gasp, she was frozen to the floor. He caught her eye for half a second before unscrewing the cap to his bottle of tequila and pouring the yellow liquid over his injury. She saw the pain flash in his eyes, but he barely grunted. She saw the liquor wash more blood from the wound that would just not stop bleeding, "Get in here, Dee. I need you to stitch this up, I can't reach it." She took a step forward, but something held her several feet away, like a physical force. "Damn it, girl! I said get in here."
She took another step forward, but still couldn't bring herself to close that gap. He pulled his lighter from his pocket and began to run her sewing needle through the flames. "Dad, I can help Sam pack. We can drive to the emergency room. They can fix you up there."
"No time. Police were headed towards the warehouse by the time I was a few blocks away. We need to leave town, and I can't do that if I'm bleeding out." She took a deep breath and came closer, taking the needle from him. She started unspooling the black thread, but he stopped her. "Use this," he said, handing her a little white plastic container of dental floss. She looked up at him, green eyes seeming startlingly bright against her too pale face. "It's sterile," he explained, quieter this time. She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. Her fingers felt cold, her hands were shaking. But she could sew. Sure. No problem. She cut a length of floss and threaded it through the eye of the needle. See? No problem at all. She told herself that her breath wasn't coming out ragged. And no way did that whimpering sound come out of her. Breathe, damn it.
She steeled herself and looked at the wound she was about to close. And groaned. Something was wrong. Her vision was fuzzy. And then she realized she was crying. John Winchester grabbed his daughter's small pink wrist in his large blackened hand. "Get ahold of yourself. You can do this. You *don't* cry." She sniffed, and rubbed the rest of the tears from her eyes with the back of her other hand. She nodded, but didn't trust her voice to answer. He let her go, but still she didn't move. He took a long drink from the tequila bottle, and for a moment she wished she was old enough to drink too. "You know how to sew. Why do you think I bought you that stuff? So you could make little toys for your brother? It was practice. So that one day, when I needed you to, you could do this. I need you," he grimaced, and it took him a moment to continue, "to do this."
She thought of all the toys she had made, that's all this was. Just another toy. Ok. Fine. Deep breath. She started. Oh god. It didn't sound like thread through cloth at all, more like a metal zipper closing smoothly. Her stomach clenched, but she kept going, stealing glances at her father as he chugged more of that awful booze.
He never once looked back at her as she worked, he just stared distantly into the mirror while she struggled on in detached silence. Her hands hardly shook until she tied the little surgeon's knot: over and over and pull, but somehow, she couldn't pull it tight. She tried again, but by now her hands wouldn't stop shaking, and the blood on her fingers kept making them slip off the floss. Again her father's big hands blocked her way, he took the floss, and pulled the ends tight. Dee heard her father move to the mirror, but her head was buried in her hands. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just stood there quietly. "Not bad," he said, almost to himself. "Not bad. Keep practicing," and then he left the room. She could hear his muffled voice tell Sam he was going to unlock the car.
Two deep breaths. She heard her father leave the motel room and let out a scream. She punched the wall until her hand bled, then wrapped it in toilet paper and went out into the room. All of their bags were laid out on the bed. "Son of a bitch!" Keep practicing? No. No way. Never. Oh god, no. Never. She dug through the bags until she found all the little dolls, a Sam, a Dee, a Bobby, a John, a dozen assorted monsters. They made her stomach twist into an even tighter ball. She threw them into the trash can, then grabbed as many of the bags as she could, stumbling under their weight, and carried them out into the night. She helped Sam load them into the car, then climbed in and slammed the door behind her. Their father went back into the motel room one last time to check everything was in order, probably so the police couldn't track them. She made sure her brother was buckled securely and buckled her own belt. She sat, in the quiet, in the dark. Face an impassive mask staring out the window, she waited for the next order.