I Really Messed Up, Guys: A Supernatural Self Harm Fic

Good Little Soldier

"Son of a bitch," Dean mumbled. He didn't mean to hurt her. He'd never mean to hurt her, he only wanted her to see herself through his eyes. He knew he had gone about it in an aggressive way, though. He was in the heat of the moment. He and Sam had worked relentlessly to make sure Casey had a good week and didn't feel the need to cry or think anything bad, but he'd gone and screwed it up. Because of his crap temper. Dean felt like he could punch a wall, but he didn't want to scare his little sister more. There wasn't anything he could say to her to take back his screaming fest. Her face was buried in her knees and her shoulders wracked up and down in hard sobs and gasping breaths that were punctuated with painful wails. The urge to walk over and scoop her in his arms to make everything alright was strong, but she wouldn't want to be touched by him, and he couldn't blame her. Sam could potentially help, but Dean needed to fix this himself. If he didn't fix it, there was no way she would ever talk to him again, especially if she didn't feel okay.

Suddenly Casey slammed her feet against the floor and flung herself at the bed, smashing Dean into the mattress by the force of her vault from the chair. She laid on her side and pulled Dean down, effectively wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. He could feel how hot her face was through his shirt and could feel the tears soaking in, but he couldn't care less. He simply wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him, thanking God or whoever that she wasn't afraid of him.

She pulled his arms from around him and tucked them in between his stomach and her chest, her hands in tight fists, then pulled her knees up too. Dean adjusted his arms so they still fit around her. She was grateful for that. She wanted to make herself as small as humanly possible so she couldn't hurt anybody anymore. Castiel wasn't afraid of almost anything. The realization of how bad she'd scared her little family was a painful one, but she was glad Dean had told her. There wasn't anything Casey could do to reverse the damage she caused, but it was possible to lessen future potential damage.

And that started with honesty.

"Dean?" she asked in a hushed tone. Dean made a small noise to show he was listening. "I'm so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt anybody. I didn't think anybody was gonna find out, and I never thought of how it might affect you all. I'm sorry, Dean." The sobbing had lessened, but the tears were still going strong, the dampness from them running was making her neck itch.

"Oh, sweetheart," Dean murmured. He began rubbing her back. "It's alright, kid. You have nothing to apologize for. I do. I'm sorry for yelling at you. I shouldn't have done that. It pissed me off when you said you don't matter because you do matter. Knowing that you don't realize that makes me so angry. I guess I finally cracked."

"It's okay. I'm not mad. I'm glad somebody finally told me what was going on outside of me. I knew you guys were upset but not the extent, I guess." Casey squeezed her eyes closed and swallowed hard, but her breath caught on another sob and she made a small hiccup. She regretted everything.

When Casey was seven years old she'd fallen out of a tree. John had been teaching her how to climb it because she was so small, he said her best chance of survival would be running. A lot of monsters could still climb trees, but a lot of them couldn't either. He wanted her to know any possible way of escape. She'd always thought it was stupid until they'd finally began to bring her along on hunts, then she was much more appreciative of the tedious drills.

She wasn't on a drill, though. She was climbing a tree outside of a motel while Dean and Sam and their father pretended to look for her. It was one of the rare times they were almost a normal family. They could hear her giggling above them and the rustle as she moved from branch to branch. She'd felt like a regular monkey, high above her family as she snuck around among the leaves. Then she thought of The Lion King and how Rafiki always had a staff when he bounced around and decided she wanted one. She scanned the branches, looking for one that would be thin enough to break off, but thick enough to mimic Rafiki. Finally she found one on the next tree over. It was perfect. Wiry, bendy, and about her height. The perfect staff for her. John hadn't taught her how to move from tree to tree yet, but it couldn't be much different than going from branch to branch on the same tree.

Casey pulled her knife from the inner pocket of her jacket. It was seven inches long and half of the blade was serrated. A gift from Dean for her birthday, her first personal knife. The sheath was thick leather that sharpened the blade every time you pulled it in or out, real top notch stuff. But nothing was too good for his little sister. The tree could dull the blade, but the case would soon make it good as new again.

Casey crawled to the middle of the branch she was on, halting when she could feel it begin to bend beneath her weight. Dad had taught her to be sensitive to the feeling. A sturdy branch from the target tree was two feet away, an easy feat. Casey stuck out her foot while holding on to the first tree to test the sturdiness. The wood didn't bend. She brought her foot back, then used both feet to push off and on to the next branch, catching it with both arms and one leg. Flawless. Casey righted herself, then climbed to go get her staff. She located it with ease and set to work on sawing it off. As she got deeper into the wood, she began putting more pressure on it with her free hand in hopes that it might snap so she wouldn't have to keep at it. She could hear her dad had gone inside and that it was just her brothers playing her game now.

Finally, the branch snapped off and fell, but bringing her with it. She'd leaned all of her weight into the would-be staff and hadn't kept her balance on the tree. Casey felt her knife rake deeply across her right arm as she fell and shrieked. "Dean!" The staff caught on several branches, breaking her fall multiple times. She'd hit the ground with a thud, knocking the breath out of her. She looked up into the traitorous tree above her blankly and gasping for breath. She heard both brother's footsteps pound toward her and, before she knew what she was doing, shoved the knife back into her pocket and chucked her staff someplace before she started crying.

"Casey!" Sam yelled.

"What the hell? Dad!" called Dean. Crap.

Casey heard a door slam and cringed. Sam leaned over her, hair falling in his face. "Casey, can you move?" She nodded. "Your arms? Legs?" She moved each limb to his satisfaction as Dean hovered over both of them.

"I think I'm fine. I hurt, but I think I'm fine," Casey said quietly in between sniffs. Her arm was growing hot and she could feel the wetness, but she didn't want to say anything about it if neither of them had noticed.

"Move." She watched a hand shove Dean and her father's hazel eyes come into focus. "What happened?" He paused as he silently assessed her. "You can move?"

"Yeah. Sam already made me." Her voice was quieter to her father so it didn't shake. She didn't want to appear weak in his eyes. She was his good soldier. Good soldiers were not weak.

He nodded. "Good." He scooped her up with both arms and she groaned. There would definitely be bad bruising along her back the next day. John brought her in the room and lay her on her side. "Now," he began, and rifled through a bag to produce a first aid kit. "What the hell happened to your arm?"

Every part of her had wanted to tell him it was the branches. That one snagged her on the way down, but the cut was too clean and deep to be from a branch in a fall that brief. Her mouth was aching to lie. She'd just gotten that knife. Dad had never let her have a knife to herself before, and he'd just begun to let her carry it outside of a hunt like her brothers did. It wasn't her lack of knife safety that had screwed her over, it was her childish urge to be stupid Rafiki and carry a staff around that got her cut.

But she was also his good little soldier. And good little soldiers didn't lie to their families. Even if that meant digging their own grave and getting their privileges taken away.

What she was about to do felt a lot like being Dad's little soldier again, and it sucked a lot.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?" Dean stopped rubbing her back, as if that would somehow help him hear her better.

"Don't be mad, okay?" Casey felt Dean tense. It was a stupid request, she knew, but maybe if she asked he would at least try to be calm.

"I won't be," he said slowly, his promise full of trepidation.

Casey inhaled deeply and clenched her eyes tight. I'm a good little soldier. And good little soldiers don't lie to their families.

"Dean, I cut again."