Dean finally thinks Lizzy is in a deep enough sleep to wriggle himself free of her grasp. She never said another word to him after arriving. Lizzy just sobbed uncontrollably until finally she was overcome by the need for rest. She's completely broken and exhausted and it's leaving him wondering what happened. Dean slowly unlatches her fists from his shirt and moves carefully until he's standing, not wanting to wake her. Clearly she was in desperate need for the peaceful reprieve that only sleep will give her in the moment.

Needing answers, Dean creeps quietly around the room. The only thing she came in with is that same tan leather bomber jacket she was never without. He'd helped her out of it the second he recognized the lethargy start to settle in and now it is in a heap on the floor. Picking it up, he takes a seat at the small table in their room and looks it over. There's blood on it, but no knife or bullet holes so that's good. He digs through her pockets and pulls out a few items; a crumpled wad of very little cash, a couple wrinkled receipts, one from a motel in Oklahoma City and two from gas stations along her journey, a set of keys, and a small silver pocket knife. Not much help there. He's left wondering about everything until she wakes and can tell him herself.

"No." The soft yet frightened voice comes from the still deep asleep woman and Dean is by her side instantly. Lizzy's face is twisted with distress and her body twitches as she goes through her nightmare, undoubtedly about whatever it is that brought her here. "No. Lou…."

Dean stokes her hair gently with his hand, doing his best to help sooth away her torment. Having been through several of Sam's nightmares, he knows how to handle them with ease. "It's ok, L," he whispers as softly as possible, not wanting to wake her. You never wake a nightmare having hunter unless you want a fist to the face, well-known fact. "I'm here. Lizzy, you're safe."

She jumps suddenly in her sleep and cries out.

Dean grabs her hand in his and tries again to calm her. "Lizzy, you're safe. Shh. Everything will be alright. I'm right here. Nothing can hurt you…."

As if she could hear him, her face relaxes slightly while he speaks to her and the jerking movements start to subside. He stays seated on the floor next to her sleeping form for a while longer, her hand in a vice grip on his, and he watches every movement and change in her expression until he's sure she'll be okay. Nightmares are one of the worst parts of the job, he and Sam both know that for sure, so he does what he can to keep her free from the added torment.

She eventually calms, her nightmare ending while she's still out, and her hand loosens on his. Still, he chooses not to let go as he looks at her. Even when battered, bruised, and nearly demolished emotionally, she's still something to behold, being so at peace and beautiful while resting. Seeing her made him realize just how badly he's missed her and needed her these past months. Looking so helpless now, he barely recognizes the usually larger than life woman before him though he understands as every hunter has their limit.

After some time Dean stands and grabs his phone. He makes his way to the motel door and carefully opens it, walks through, and closes it slowly behind him without making too much noise. He presses speed-dial number two the moment he's alone and listens as the line rings. Across the lot he sees Sam walking towards him. His brother appears to have taken the news exceptionally hard and Dean hopes the time away helped clear his head. He really needs Sam in a good place to be able help Lizzy though this whole thing. He can't do this on his own.

"Dean?" Bobby answers quickly.

"She's here, Bobby," Dean laments into the phone as he leans back into the front brick wall of their motel. It is early morning now, a few minutes before five, and the sky is pink behind Sam's tall frame.

"And Lou?"

"Not here. I'm not sure what happened, but all Lizzy said when she got here was 'She's gone.' She said it a couple times before crying for over an hour straight and passing out." Dean pauses to take a preparatory deep breath. "Lou's dead, Bobby. I think she's dead."

Sam reaches Dean's spot out front, having heard his words as he walked, and leans against the outside motel wall next to him, arms crossed and shoulders drooped. He listens and watches Dean through the conversation.

"You still there?" Dean asks after hearing a sigh followed by a long silence. Please, he thinks, don't be crying Bobby. He can't take any more of that.

"Yeah, I'm here," Bobby responds in a shaky voice while inhaling deeply and breathing out unsteadily. "You sure about this, Dean?"

"Pretty damn sure," Dean promises. "I've never seen her like this. And… what she said… I just know her well enough to know that she's a mess for good reason."

The very unsteady sigh from Bobby nearly kills Dean. "Where's Lizzy now?"

"Still sleeping. Cried until she passed out. She's in some seriously bad shape. Black eye, cuts and bruises everywhere, a lot of blood and her chin needs to be stitched. You have any idea what they were going after?"

"Lou had caught wind of a couple missing people in Oklahoma City. They told me they were gonna check it out. I tried to remind them of what happened the last time they decided to go after some missing people but of course…" Bobby pauses. "They didn't listen."

"When do they ever?" Dean complains, recalling all the times the stubborn women wouldn't listen to Bobby or anyone when they got determined. "Guess they had a run in with whatever it was they were after."

"Sounds like it. When she wakes up try an' find out what happened, but take it easy, son. Put yourself in her shoes. I believe you've been in this very place once before and made some rather stupid decisions. Luckily I don't think she's aware of crossroads demons. Otherwise I'd say tie her to a fucking chair."

"We'll do what we can. We might be here for a while, Bobby. I'll keep you posted." Dean waits a beat then asks, "You gonna be okay?"

Bobby takes a moment to answer that. "I'm always okay. You just make sure you help that girl anyway you can."

"We'll do what we can." Dean snaps the cellphone shut and Sam immediately starts asking questions.

"What happened? Does Bobby know?"

"Said they went looking into some missing persons in Oklahoma. That's pretty much all he knew."

"Damn it," Sam laments heavily, looking down at his boots. "Whatever did this is fucking dead."

"Absolutely," Dean wholeheartedly agrees.

"So we gotta figure this out. But asking Lizzy about what happened…."

"Awful, I know," Dean finishes the thought. "But we have to. Hopefully she'll understand."

"She should," Sam nods and when he looks up at Dean his big brother nearly loses it. Sam's face is long is dried tear streaks. His eyes are so sad Dean can't remember the last time he's looked this way.

"Sammy, you gonna be alight in there?" Dean has to check before going back inside.

Sam just looks out over the lot. "We gotta help Lizzy."

Taking it for what it was, a simple admittance that Sam's really not alright but doesn't want to talk about it, Dean opens the motel door. Sam follows close behind to go help check on Lizzy.

When they gets inside they see that Lizzy's awake, lying on her side and staring blankly at the curtained window across the room. She doesn't move nor blink when they come in, just stays in her somber world off in the distance.

Unsure of what to do at first, Dean takes his time in walking to her bed. He sits by her feet at the end of the mattress and places his hand lightly on her jean-clad calf. "How you feeling?" He keeps his voice quiet, unsure of how to begin this horrible conversation and how to comfort her now that she's collected herself a little.

"I don't know," she honestly answers, her voice choked and her tone lost. She still hasn't set eyes on either brother, choosing the green window curtains over eye contact.

"That's okay," Dean nods even though she isn't looking at him. He grips her leg slightly tighter to show he's here for her and she recoils, her leg pulling into herself to get away from his touch. Dean realizes she's just as mad at him as he'd hoped she wasn't.

"Lizzy?" Sam quietly says her name and sits on the bed directly across from Lizzy's line of vision, forcing her to look at him. Their eyes meet and they recognize the loss and pain in each other.

"Hi Sam." It was plain and emotionless, much like her tone when she first arrived on their doorstep.

"Hi Lizzy," he responds just as quietly.

After a beat, her tone still devoid of life, she tells him, "You need a haircut."

"Good to see you too." Sam's small and forced smile doesn't help alleviate the situation like Dean thinks he's attempting to.

"Well… at least I get to talk to you in person for once, right?" Lizzy comments plainly.

What did she just say? Dean shoots Sam a surprised and very confused look. Sam's been talking to Lizzy? When? Why didn't he know about that?

But Sam does his best to avoid him, only glancing at Dean for a split second through his periphery before going back to Lizzy.

"Yeah, it's good to talk face to face," Sam begins cautiously. "I'm… I'm so sorry, Lizzy. I am. I, I don't know what I would do…."

"If you lost your best friend?" she asks him. "If the one person you have left on Earth died and left you alone? Yeah, I don't know what I'd do either." Silent tears leak from her eyes at the very thought.

Both men stay silent. She's angry and she should be. They aren't sure how to approach the situation. Dean knows they have to act fast to keep on top of whatever it is that did this to Lou. If there is something still out there that killed her, that thing wasn't going to be alive very much longer if the Winchesters have anything to do with it.

"Hey, can you sit up?" Dean asks gently of her, trying to stay even and caring when he really doesn't know where he stands with her. "I need to check you out."

"Hitting on me already, huh? Didn't take long," she jests flatly and with venom.

"You know what I mean," he explains in a serious tone.

"Fine," she relents stubbornly. It takes much effort to get herself up off the pillow and get herself seated. She moves as if everything hurts everywhere.

Once upright, Dean sees she looks worse than he had thought. Crying for an hour straight did nothing to help her swollen eye, which is shut now. Her chin finally stopped trickling blood constantly, but it still needs to be closed up properly. And those are only the injuries he can see right away.

"Do you still have all your medical supplies?" Sam quietly questions.

"I… uh. I don't know…" Lizzy responds, trying to remember if she had them in the car or not. Her mind isn't processing anything right now, even the things that should be the most obvious.

"That's ok," Sam assures her. "I'll grab whatever we have." He gets up and takes the keys to the Impala off of the table before heading outside.

"C'mon." Dean holds his hand out to Lizzy in order to help her up and lead her to the bathroom.

Looking at his hand for a second, clearly Lizzy contemplates if she wants to take his hand or not. She stubbornly doesn't want to but the pain she's in makes moving suck so much that she's realizing she actually might need his help.

She takes his hand begrudgingly and he pulls her up until she's standing. He walks her to the bathroom, never dropping her hand, and puts a towel down on the closed, cold toilet seat. Dean gestures to it silently for her to take a seat.

Plopping down onto the toilet with a wince, she slumps her shoulders. Dean's heart aches with how broken she is. He really has never seen her in anywhere near this emotional state before. Lizzy was always this oddly bright ray of pure sunshine whenever he thought about her.

Dean dampens a washcloth and kneels on the floor in front of her, trying to keep enough distance to keep her comfortable with him. "So, aside from the obvious black eye and split chin, any other damage I need to know about?"

"I'm pretty sure my knuckles aren't supposed to look like this." She holds up her right hand, her dominant side, and he sees how fat and bruised her middle, ring and pinky finger joints are. Every knuckle is covered with split skin and yet more dried blood. They looked pretty jammed, if not slightly dislocated. "And my upper side on the right hurts like a bitch when I breathe. Bruised up some ribs when I got tossed into a metal dumpster. Nothing you can do about that though."

"Hell of a fight you go into." He hopes she'll start telling him on her own what happened with little prying on his part.

"Yep," Lizzy blankly agrees as she continues to stare at her hands in her lap. Talking feels too heavy and, even if that's exactly what he wants her to do, she doesn't want to.

Dean starts gently wiping away the blood and dirt from her face, starting at her forehead and working his way down. He takes his time and moves gently, like she's a spooked animal, all while mentally preparing for this conversation they need to have. Clearly he's going to have to ask.

"Lizzy, what happened?" He doesn't stop his work, but looks to her eyes as he asks. She's fixated on the old, brown tiles of the floor and doesn't answer him. She presses her lips together in a thin line and Dean thinks she might cry again. He definitely doesn't want that. "You don't have to tell me everything. I just need to know some of it, or at least what did this to her."

She knows she has to. It hurts so much but she has to talk. She's the one that showed up on his doorstep after a year apart. He has to know what's going on.

Dean can see the inner turmoil. "If you can't do that right now…"

"We were looking into these three people who went missing," she interrupts, getting it over with. "Lou read about it online. They were around our age, two guys and one girl, and they disappeared all within five days of each other. The weird part was that there had been reports sent into the police that they had been seen around town but were acting off character. Like the girl… she was really religious and had been saving herself for marriage. She was seen leaving a bar with a stranger a couple days after she initially disappeared. That was super weird of her. None of the missing people ever went back to their homes or called their parents or friends. It was like they'd totally overhauled their personalities. We decided to see what was happening. Told Bobby about it, he said not to go. Should've listened."

She slowly shakes her head with regret and sighs loudly before looking up from the floor. Instead of looking at Dean in the eye, however, she keeps avoiding him and instead inspects the shower curtain.

"After checking in with the families and the local police, we had one lead. The three were normal, run of the mill people who had nothing linking them together except a local dive bar. All three had been there that week, not necessarily the night they disappeared, but around that time, so we went to the bar to check it out. The bartend…"

There is a light knock on the bathroom door and Lizzy pauses her retelling. Dean reaches out to turn the knob and open it a little. Sam walks in with the small medical supply bag he retrieved from their car and hands it to Dean. Dean gestures with his head toward the bathtub for Sam to stay as he takes out an icepack, pops the inside bag to activate it, and hands it over to Lizzy. Sam gets the hint and sits down on the porcelain edge.

"The bartender there told us that the crowd of loud and really rude people in the back corner had been there every night for the past ten days but he'd never seen them before that." Lizzy presses the cold compress to her injured eye. "He said it was hard to get them to leave at closing time and they were always yelling, laughing, breaking bottles and demanding things like they owned the joint. Remembering what the entry in our journal that you," she glances at Sam, "Wrote said about vampires, we decided to high-tail it outta there. We knew this wasn't a fight for us to get into alone. Lou was going to call you as soon as we got outside, actually." Lizzy's eyes connect with Dean's for the first time since she woke up. His heart skips a beat when he sees the deep chestnut color peering at him, but he immediately grows sad when he notices how different they look than he'd remembered. They aren't bright and full of life anymore. Her eyes are missing that spark, that bright light they used to hold.

"On our way out the door, some chick walked into my shoulder. On instinct, I turned and told her to watch where the fuck she was going. When she faced me I recognized her as the missing girl we were looking for and she was crazy pissed at me for calling her out. I knew I had fucked up right then. I just told off something that wasn't human. We left in a rush after that. A few minutes later we were in the ally along the side of the building on our way to Lou's car. Lou had her phone out to call when she went down. We were followed out and one of the vamps hit her on the side of the head with a bat. She went down, out cold." She pauses when her voice heightens and she starts to lose it again. "Next thing I know, I'm doing my best to beat the shit out of three vampires that jumped me, but as you can see," she gestures to her overall appearance, "They were winning. I kept calling out to Lou, trying to get her conscious again, but she never responded. Another vamp came out of nowhere and was leaning over her on the ground. It was doing something to her." Her voice grows even higher in pitch as she begins to cry again. "I hated that he was touching her. That's my best friend and I couldn't get to her or help her. My view wasn't good while I was fighting but I know he was hurting her. She had blood all over her mouth and face. She looked like she was barely breathing."

Dean jumps in his skin at this. Blood on her mouth. He turns his head slightly to catch Sam out of the corner of his eye. The look Sam gives him confirms that they are on the same page.

"When I tried to run to her I got tossed into a dumpster," Lizzy keeps going, not seeing their faces of recognition. "I somehow got up again but almost immediately I hit the pavement and everything went black. I think I got the shit end of that bat too." She rubs the back of her head as her voice begins to return to its normal tone.

"Lemme see," Dean inquires as he leans up on his knees and checks her head himself. The huge egg-shaped bump and open wound confirms what she had already thought. "Yeah, that doesn't look too good."

"I'll live," she responds. "I don't know how long I was out, but when I came to Louie was gone. They fucking killed her and took her. I was left with no one to say goodbye to, no one to bury, nothing." The tears start to spill once more. "I sat in that ally alone for an hour before I could even move. I couldn't think, couldn't talk, I didn't even cry that whole time. That must be what shock is like. I called Bobby in a panic once I was actually able to function again."

"That's when you came here?" Dean asks as he returns to cleaning her face.

"Yeah. Didn't know where else to go. This is the only thing I could think of."

Dean shares a sympathetic look with her as he wipes away the tears on her cheeks.

"We're glad you came, Lizzy" Sam informs her. He is telling the truth, they were both happy to see her, no matter what the circumstances. They also wanted to be the ones to help her, especially now that they know how badly she's going to need it.

Dean's just content knowing that she thought of him first when she needed help the most. That's got to count for something.

"Hey, why don't you take a shower and clean up," Dean suggests. "I'll grab you something to wear and I'll get you stitched up when you're done."

"Stitched?" Lizzy wonders.

"You're chin's wide open. So is your head. Need to close them up."

"Fucking fantastic," she laments. "You know, I was really hoping to walk away from the worst moment of my life with a scar to remind me of it every time I look in the mirror." The bitterness is biting.

Dean stands up from his place on the floor and gets ready to give her some privacy. He pauses, looking at her small, hurting form and does something he never would have guessed he'd do within their situation. He plants an innocent kiss on her forehead to show that, despite what he's done, he still really cares.

He then immediately rushes out of the bathroom before he can catch any negative reactions to his actions and Sam follows. As soon as they hear the water turn on Dean grabs Sam by the upper arm and yanks him out of the motel room. He really couldn't have Lizzy hear this conversation. Not yet at least.

"Fuck!" Dean yells to no one in particular once the door is closed and they are outside in the parking lot. His fists ball up with anger now that he knows what happened.

Sam knows too. With the eyes of a frightened younger brother, he looks to Dean and asks him, "Lou isn't dead, is she?" He already knows the answer. He just need to actually hear it for it to be real.

"No, Sam," Dean tells him. "Lou is definitely not dead."