Note: This chapter has been edited from it's original form for compliance with the M rating on FanFiction. For the full, MA version of this chapter please visit this same story on Archive of Our Own. The story title and chapter title are the same. The author name is DeepLittleSOB. The link to my Dashboard is in my profile.
This is my take on the episode 'The End'.
Dean had Castiel zap Lizzy and him back to the Impala and they took off immediately. Lizzy isn't sure what happened with Dean while she was out like a light, but he's been especially attached to her ever since she woke up in his arms in the middle of a random street, never letting her hand go for more than a few seconds at a time, and he's been unusually quiet.
After another four hours of driving, they arrive in the town Dean agreed to meet Sam in. They found a motel that they figured they could catch a few hours sleep at before the sun came up and settled into the small room.
"So what happened with Zachariah?" Lizzy wonders to Dean as he finishes up brushing his teeth. She watches his body language stiffen through the bathroom doorway the second she asks. Sitting Indian-style on the large bed, brushing her hair, she tries again. "Whatever it was, it's totally affecting you."
"Don't really want to talk about it," Dean answers after spitting into the sink.
"Maybe not, but when you don't want to talk that tends to be when talking would do you the most good."
"L, it's Zach, so clearly it sucked." Dean tosses his toothbrush into his duffel at his feet and walks back into the room. "And it isn't something I want to go through the highlight reel of, not right now." Or ever, he thinks to himself
Dean drops down onto the bed next to Lizzy and pulls her in, his arms encircling her frame as she lies down against his side.
"You're really clingy today," she mentions as she cuddles into him, her head resting under his chin. "That has something to do with it, doesn't it?"
"Stop prying," Dean says as he closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of her shampoo as he does. So comforting.
"Not gonna and you know it. You might as well just spill."
Dean quiets for a moment with her words and tightens his grip on her. He then sighs and lifts her chin, kissing her softly before looking her square in the eye. "I'm never gonna let anything get you."
The statement catches her completely off guard. The sincerity in his eyes, the purity of his words… well now she's just plain scared. "Jesus, what the hell happened to you, Hot Shot?"
"I realize now how things could be. Without you," Dean tries to explain as vaguely as possible. "I know what it could be like if you weren't here. I don't ever want that."
"Dean, talk to me," Lizzy asks of him, turning over on her stomach and looking him hard in the eye. "What do you mean without me? Where the fuck did Zach bring you?"
Instead of answer, Dean leans over to kiss her. The idea of what the future is going to be if he says no to Michael, and he still thinks he'll say no, is too horrifying to explain to her. He's going to fix it though. He's going to get Sam back, and he's not going to let his brother say yes to the devil. And he's definitely not letting Lizzy die because he and Sam stopped talking to each other. That life, that pit the world becomes… there's no way he could hack it without her by his side. He's shocked his future self made it for a year all alone. Dean would have assumed he'd drink himself to death by then. Or put a bullet in his brain.
"Dean?" Lizzy whispers to him, her heavy worry still nagging her. She presses her forehead to his and she watches him close his eyes. Dean shakes his head, refusing her request once more, and instead pulls her on top of him until she's lying flush against his body. He cups her face and brings her lips to his again. After an experience like that, he needs her. He needs to not only see that she's still there with him. He needs to feel that she's right by his side, that she isn't gone, that he still has her.
Lizzy continues to be concerned as he so lovingly embraces her, something deep driving him. She, as always, can feel him from the inside out and she is getting a whole cocktail of emotions from him. He's fearful and very apprehensive, but at the same time he's desperately loving and adoring. Whatever happened to him, whatever that dick Zachariah pulled, Dean's in pieces and once again Lizzy sees that it's up to her to put him back together again. She's more than fine with that however. She'd do anything for him, even reassemble Humpty for the millionth time.
Straddling his hips, Lizzy leans down and continues kissing him. They move slow for once as this isn't about carnal need or utter lust for the other. It's about true love, what they have between them and what it is they are always scared to lose in their line of work.
His hands trailing down the sides of her face and continuing on, Dean lets his arms come to rest on her back as he hugs her into him. She really has become his everything. Sometimes he thinks back to when they first met, when there were just kids with a lot of sexual tension and severe attraction to one another. He never imagined that by the end of that long weekend together at Bobby's, one filled with drinking and actual laughing and a whole lot of sex, he'd walk away completely changed. Lizzy was sharp and so unbelievably caring right off the bat. He gravitated towards her the moment he laid eyes on her. When she left it hurt, but he lived on even if he felt a part of him went with her.
Cut to three years later and he most definitely can't live without her. She's like his air and he can't breathe when she's gone. He has his vices, sure. Sex, booze, food… but his true addiction in life is her. He needs his fair share of Lizzy just to survive.
Her fingertips brushing over his cheek, she hums her love to him as she kisses him. After years of being together and seeing him almost every minute of every day, her heart still feels like bursting when she's with him. It seems insane to her that a human being can be so entwined with another but she was living proof of it. She may have a way with words at all times, but explaining this thing she has with Dean, the feeling he gives her when she's near him, the flutter she gets when he looks at her a certain way, she could never do it. Words will never do it justice.
Dean rolls to his side without letting her go. Once he's hovering over her, Lizzy's legs wrapping around him and bringing him closer, he looks down at her and sighs.
"Whatever it is," Lizzy quietly ensures. "Whatever got to you, it's done. You're here, ok?" Lizzy captures his jaw gently in her hands. "So am I. We're both here and everything is fine."
Dean nods and leans down to rejoin their lips. She doesn't understand, he knows that, but he can't fill her in right now. It's heavy and awful and if it comes true then he's alone for good. He got lucky once and he knows he won't again. This has to last.
Taking in the warmth and feel of his skin, Lizzy slips her hands under his shirt. As her fingers absorb the sensation of every taught muscle and time-smoothed scar, she realizes how well she knows him. She has a map in the back of her mind of his entire body. She knows every perfect curve, every wonderful dip and valley. He was beautiful, his outside perfectly matching his inside... and she still considers herself lucky every damn day for having him.
She pulls his shirt over his head, tossing it away quickly before pulling him close to her, arms tightly around him. Taking a moment to hug him in, letting him be sure she's still there, she brings her lips to his ear.
"I love you," Lizzy earnestly whispers. "I don't care what happens, that will never change."
Dean drops his head in the crook of her neck and lets her words soak in.
"Hey," Lizzy softy calls to him, bringing her hands to his cheeks and lifting his face above her to make eye contact. "You know that, right?"
Dean nods, knowing full well how she feels.
"Then be grateful, not worried and scared all the time," she tells him, kissing him once quickly. "If you focus on the negative, you'll never enjoy the fact that we've got this at all."
"I'm sorry that I do that," Dean tells her, the pain of it all clear in his expression.
"Don't be sorry," Lizzy smiles warmly up to him. "Just stop doing it." Running one of her hands down his cheek and onto his neck, she pulls him down to her, kissing him sweetly on the jaw before telling him, "The only thing you have to do is love me right back."
"You know I do," Dean closes his eyes, her lips landing just below his earlobe.
"Yes," Lizzy responds quietly, lips pressing softly to his cheek and then nose. "So show me." She kisses his lips softly. "Show me how much you love me."
Lizzy doesn't understand his actions, so quiet and serious for such a moment once they're done, until she hears the quiet sob next to her ear. Her hands still on his sides she can feel his ribs shake with sorrow and she truly panics.
"Dean?" she calls to him and he doesn't answer. Instead he brings his arms around her and lies on his side while pulling her to face him, his face still against her neck. Lizzy wraps herself around him, trying to comfort him by hanging onto him as tightly as she can. Her hand combing through his hair she can feel her heart pounding in her chest with worry. "Shh, it's ok, baby. Talk to me."
He doesn't move, doesn't speak, just holds her harder and cries. It's all he can do as his mind is so overworked, so crushed and weighted down that it needs the release.
"You're scaring me," Lizzy whispers, still embracing him.
"I'm gonna lose you," Dean chokes out into her hair. "You're gonna be gone and I'm gonna be all alone."
Tears of her own form and blur her vision as Dean speaks her very own fears. She's always been terrified that something was going to take him from her. It happened once and Michael is threatening to do just that once more. She can't have it happen, not again. They both live in a constant state of anxiety over losing the other.
"You're not going to lose me," Lizzy tells him with uncertainty.
"You don't know that."
"No," Lizzy admits, lifting his head to face her. The tear streaked face looking right back up at her, so sad and weak, so unlike the man she knows so well, and she smiles. "But you know I'll do my damnedest to make is so."
Dean shakes his head no, knowing that no matter how hard she tries she couldn't make this promise, he returns his head to her neck and lets the tears fall freely.
He's just so fucking terrified….
"What made you change your mind?" Sam wonders the next morning as he looks over Ruby's knife that's now in his hands. His brother handed it over to him in a gesture that they both know is much larger than it looks.
"Long story…" Dean bushes off, not needing to recall his future experience. "The point is... maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know. I just know we're all we've got. More than that, we keep each other human."
"Thank you. Really. Thank you. I won't let you down." The look in Sam's eyes, the sheer happiness and relief to be back, makes Dean know that this decision is right.
"Oh, I know it," Dean nearly laughs. "I mean, you are the second-best hunter on the planet."
"Third!" Lizzy shouts to them from her spot leaning on the Impala a few feet away. She hung back to give them time and she had no intentions of eavesdropping at first. Damn curiosity killed her again.
Sam nods with a grin and a quiet laugh. It felt so good to hear Lizzy and Dean being themselves like that. It felt like home in every damn sense of the word and the feeling of home is exactly what he needs right now. That and his family having his back again while they take on this looming Apocalypse in a united front.
"So, what do we do now?" Sam wonders, asking his brother for guidance like he's done his whole life.
"We make our own future," Dean answers as he turns to walk back towards the car, Sam following him.
"Guess we have no choice," he agrees as he catches Lizzy pushing off from the car with her wide toothy smile. He walks straight for her and she hugs him in tight.
"I missed you, Sam-I-Am," she says against the front of his coat.
"Yeah, I know you did," Sam smirks as he feels so much better already.
"Ah, I'm so fucking happy!" she says, turning her bright eyes up to him. "I was so tired of doing all the research!"
"Is that all I am to you?" Sam asks, jokingly pushing her away from him.
"A big giant brain? Pretty much!" Lizzy laughs as she drops into the back seat, ready to let the brothers have some time together. Once they're all in the car, she leans forward over the front seat. "Dean sucks at research and my eyes are tired." She claps Sam on the shoulder. "Glad to have you back on the team, sport."
