Wake Up Smiling

Okay, so it’s right over center, left over center. Right over center, left over center, he thought to himself as the silky espresso-colored locks glided through his grip.

Of all the possible things he could be doing on a Monday morning in September, not once did Dean ever expect he’d be learning how to braid hair. But this was how Thalia wanted her hair done for her very first day of school, and what could he say? As much as he hated to admit it, that little girl had him wrapped around her finger.

The precocious five-year-old turned to glance back at him, and as his luck would have it, the sudden jerk of her head made him lose his hold on the braid.

“Daddy,” she began in that pleading tone of hers, batting those dark Bambi-like lashes at him. “Are you almost done? I don’t wanna be late on my first day!”

A sigh brushed past his lips, but he couldn’t deny the subtle smile that played across his features. Thalia had been cursed with her father’s own brand of restless impatience.

“Sorry baby doll, looks like we’ll have to save the braid for another day.”

It was then that Dean reached for the single greatest hair appliance known to man: the vacuum cleaner nozzle. With the machine turned on low, the soft hum filled their ears, and he expertly slipped a hair elastic around the nozzle. Thalia’s soft brunette curls were lightly pulled by the suction just long enough for him to ease the ponytail holder from the vacuum nozzle to her hair, and voila! She now had the perfect ponytail. He had to admit that he was pretty damn proud of himself.

It was crazy how drastically his life had changed in just six short years, but isn’t that what they always say? That having a child turned your entire world around? For Dean Winchester, the expression couldn’t have been any truer. Though his classic ’67 Impala remained parked in the garage, there was no longer a traveling arsenal stashed away in its trunk, and he no longer referred to the car as his baby. All in all, while it was one of the few souvenirs he had left to remind him of his father, Sam, and the life they’d shared together on the road, somehow having an actual living and breathing baby to care for threw things into perspective. Also, for the first time in his life, he had a place to call home. Though it was by no means a mansion, Dean appreciated all the little things that came along with being a homeowner, like having a stable address, mowing the lawn, and falling asleep in the same bed every night.

Still, old habits had a way of dying hard, and there were some aspects of his years spent hunting that he’d hadn’t quite been able to shake. Though the paranoia had subsided, Dean still slept with a knife tucked beneath his pillow and a pistol hidden away in his bedside drawer. Most nights he woke up drenched in a cold sweat, his dreams flooded with vivid flashbacks or brand new terrors, each involving something unspeakable happening to his little girl, his past coming back to haunt him in the worst possible way. He always worried about her, much the same way he’d always worried about Sam, but he refused to let her see it, and he never spoke about his old life around her.

In a way, fatherhood suited Dean. It was almost as if it was a natural extension of his personality. He’d taken care of his younger brother for as long as he could remember, and by comparison, Thalia was a piece of cake.

“Daddy, don’t forget my lunchbox,” she commanded in that matter-of-fact tone of hers, a skinny finger pointing towards a hot pink Dora the Explorer lunchbox on the kitchen counter.

With his back turned to her, Dean couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Why did she have to be so into Dora? Why couldn’t she be infatuated with something cool like Batman or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

“Thank you,” she replied, beaming up at him with the lunchbox gripped tightly in her fist.

The fact that she was already five, that she was starting kindergarten that day, felt so strange to Dean. It seemed like just yesterday he’d stared at her in amazement from the other side of the glass, watching her sleep soundly in the hospital nursery. It was a day that had changed his life forever, and that moment when the nurses had first handed her over to him and he’d held his daughter in his arms, Dean had felt his entire universe shift. It was no longer about the angels, demons, or even the apocalypse. All that mattered was this awkward, unfamiliar weight nestled in his arms. As she squinted up at him, her features still wrinkly, pink, and new, he was suddenly aware that he’d never love anyone or anything as much as he loved her.

And he’d been right.

Watching her stand there in the doorway, smiling from ear to ear in her pretty pink sundress and white Mary Janes, Dean couldn’t have been more proud of her, but at the same time, it was hard for him to thwart that hint of sadness. Thalia was the spitting image of her mother: the same long dark locks, same soulful brown eyes, and identical olive complexions. Unfortunately, the little girl had never gotten the chance to meet her own mother. There had been some complications during childbirth, uncontrollable hemorrhaging, and Thalia’s mother had passed away, leaving her father behind to try to fill both roles.

Dean had no regrets about leaving his old life behind. There were still more than enough hunters to pick up the slack, and he found some weird source of solace in the fact that his little brother was still out there fighting the good fight, but he just couldn’t do it anymore. After all, he was all Thalia had left in the world, she was utterly and completely dependent on him, and Dean flat-out refused to raise his daughter the same way his father had raised him and Sam. He couldn’t keep a newborn strapped in the backseat of the Impala while he rushed in to fight whatever hellion happened to be on the agenda that week. He couldn’t bounce his daughter, his own flesh and blood, from seedy motel room to even seedier motel room without so much as a place to call her own. No, he was going to give Thalia the normal childhood that he never got to have.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, pulling the front door open so Thalia could skip through.

“I think so…”she replied with trepidation, her teeth gnawing at her lower lip as she looked up at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean reassured her as he helped her into the passenger’s seat. “You’ll be fine. You’ve already met your teacher, and she seems nice, right?”

“Mhm.” The little girl nodded slowly, as if she was still trying to ponder the subject at hand.

“You’re gonna have so much fun,” he continued, slamming the driver’s side door behind him. “You’ll get to learn about all sorts of things and make new friends. Maybe you can even bring your old man back some of your artwork to hang up on the fridge.”

“Okay!”

On the drive to the schoolhouse, Dean couldn’t keep himself from stealing glances at his daughter in the passenger’s seat. With her arm propped up on the window and her hair blowing in the wind, Thalia looked like a miniature version of her father, and though the two of them didn’t share much in the way of appearances, he’d never been more sure that she was his own.

“Daddy, will you hold my hand?” she asked as soon as they pulled into the parking lot, and Dean was surprised because she hadn’t wanted to hold onto his hand since she’d started walking. Guess she’d inherited his independent streak as well.

“Of course I will.”

The father-daughter pair walked hand-in-hand until they entered the school, and it was at that point that Thalia pulled away, knocking her own balled-up fist into her father’s before splaying her fingers out and wriggling them.

“Blow it up,” she said with a smile.

“You go get ‘em, tiger.” Dean left her with a pat on the back and a kiss on the forehead before she ran off to join the other children in her class.

For once in his life, Dean could truly say he was happy. Though there were still the nights when he couldn’t escape his past, most mornings, he was able to wake up with a smile on his face and hope for the day ahead.