This is my take on the episode 'Let It Bleed'.
With Sam and Dean off to the Campbell compound to gather yet more references for them to pour over, Lizzy and Bobby have spent their day and a half quietly researching, trying to beat the clock. Either they figure out how to pop Purgatory first or Castiel does… and if the angel wins it could spell disaster. Every hour that they come up with no answer puts that much more dread into their hearts.
Luckily the reading and the ever ticking time until disaster has kept her fully occupied. She's has no time to think about Lou and Purgatory. Right now this whole race to the finish has been a somewhat God-send for her.
At the kitchen table Lizzy pours over her current lore book, a large volume from their first trip to Samuel's stash, as her bare feet kneed through the fur of her beloved dog. Cass has barely left her side these past few month especially and whenever she reads he either sits next to her with his head in her lap or lies down by her feet. If he chooses her feet there's a good chance he gets a lovely massage so he usually chooses that one quite wisely.
With a big sigh, Lizzy sits back in her chair and rubs her eyes. She's cooked but she won't give up, not yet. This situation is too crucial for even a pregnant woman to take a break.
As if reading her mind, Bobby yells to her from his desk, "Go lie down."
"Go screw yourself."
"Go take care of yourself. You're exhausted and you should be. Two hours of rest ain't gonna kill you…"
"But not beating Cass to the punch might kill us all." She gives him a knowing and sarcastic shit-eating grin.
Bobby looks up at her from his work, his face set. "You want me to come in there, is that it?"
"Stop. I'm fine," Lizzy tells him and leans back over her book. She's determined to be helpful here, pregnant or not.
A few moments later and Bobby is standing next to her kitchen chair. "Let's go."
"Bobby, don't…"
"I don't remember asking."
She eyes him angrily.
"Don't you give me that look. You're eight months in. You need to take care of that boy and I promise that a quick couple hour nap won't end the world. Now get your ass up those stairs so that I don't have to drag you."
That stubborn streak in her makes her just sit there, challenging him with expression only.
"I'll personally come up there in exactly two hours to wake you," Bobby vows as he holds up his hand palm out. With an eye roll Lizzy shakes it in agreement. "There you go. Up and 'attum."
He pulls her up out of the kitchen chair to stand.
"Hate you," she tells him ineffectively.
"I know you do," he grins right back. He knows she's just joking and is proved correct when she presses a kiss to his cheek before parting ways.
Shuffling her feet around the house, Lizzy makes a pit stop in the bathroom before heading to her room. She keeps the bedroom door open to keep an ear out. It's dumb to think she isn't safe at Bobby's but call her paranoid.
Her dog meanders into the room and comes right up to her as she sits down on the edge of the bed.
"What would I do without you, pup?" she smiles to him and scratches behind his ears, his favorite. Cass nudges her stomach with his nose once before licking her hand. "We love you too. Go to bed, Cass."
The animal knows that command well and Cass does his usual guard-dog thing in his dog bed across the hallway from her, laying down comfortable with his face angled to her to keep an eye out. She smiles at him, the loyal little pet that he is, and she gets into her own bed. She lives in sweats and t-shirts these days so getting ready for her nap was easy.
With a huge 'ah' to be lying in her bed, Lizzy snuggles into her pillow and closes her eyes. Yes, she should be reading and searching for an answer but damn does it feel good to lie down in her bed like this. Maybe it was a good idea after all…
Just as she's about to drift off the loud bang jolts her completely awake again.
She's heard a sound like that before. Every time she's busted down a door in the name of a hunt she's heard that very booming noise. It's nothing new to her… nor is it calming.
Already on high alert Lizzy bolts up, sitting tall in bed and eyeing out the door of the bedroom. She looks just in time to see Cass take off running from his own bed down to the bottom floor as the commotion starts up.
Her dog barks furiously as soon as he's down there and Lizzy is on her feet immediately. She grabs the bottle of holy water and her cell phone from the end table along with her Glock. Taking a deep breath she moves slowly, not wanting to make it obvious that she's upstairs in the house.
A human sounding voice screams out in pain while she can hear the faint sound of sizzling.
Ain't no demons gonna come into my house without a damn fight!
Shit. Bobby's words give it all away. She squeezes her eyes shut for a second, accepting that this is real, and tiptoes to the stairs. Lizzy walks down a couple steps and ducks down to look at what's happening.
Cass has his jaw wrapped around one blacked-eyed man's forearm, the dog attacking the intruders like she's never once seen him do before. He can sense the threat the intruders bring along with the pure evil that they are. His voice growls harshly while his vice grip in unrelenting. He's a true Winchester.
As Bobby fights off two other demons, using holy water to hold them back, she has to wonder how the hell they got past all the wards and protection around the place. After that demon walked in when Sam was a small, five year old version of himself they upped the power of their protection and had Cass do his thing to improve it.
Cass. She should have known better.
When the demon kicks her dog off of his arm he skids back into the living room. She can't see what happens next when the demon goes after him because the wall blocks her view but all she needed to hear was the frightened and pitiful whimper of the dog to understand what happened. The silence following confirms it.
Lizzy clamps a hand over her mouth to keep her sob from escaping. Her Cass.
Just then Bobby looks up and catches the sight of her, shaking his head to tell her to get back upstairs and hide.
Sprinting back to the nursery, the most protected room in the house, she shuts and locks the door. Immediately she's lining the doorway with salt from a large metal canister she stored in the closet there. It's difficult going but she manages to then push the bed in front of the door before backing up to the furthest corner of the room. As she takes out her cell phone she fumbles with it once when the large thud of a body dropping heavily onto the floor is heard from downstairs. Right after that the commotion stops and she has to pray that they didn't kill Bobby. They couldn't have. Bobby needs to be alive. He needs to be.
Focusing in, she dials Dean's number and waits.
Driving for nearly a day straight after zero sleep the night before, Dean yawns wide as he glances to Sam next to him. The guy never took a break. The second he was in the passenger seat he was reading like a mad man as Dean drove, not looking to waste a second of time not searching for the key to Purgatory.
"You ever heard of Moishe Campbell?" Sam asks, holding up the ancestor's journal briefly.
"Moishe?" Dean asks with the name he didn't expect to hear. "We got Jewish family members?"
"Apparently. They're New Yorkers," Sam explains. "Worth a look, right?"
"Ain't it all?"
"Yeah…" Sam answers absently, leafing through the possibly interesting hunting journal.
It's sometime later that Sam perks up a bit. "Holy shit."
"What?"
"Moishe… he's got some interesting friends," Sam tells his brother as he reads aloud. "Went to talk to Howard Phillips about the events of March 10th."
"Ok… what's so special about that?"
"Howard Phillips is H.P. Lovecraft." Sam smiles at him with a little excitement and repeats, "H.P. Lovecraft."
"Am I supposed to know who that is?" Dean asks with total confusion.
"He's the greatest horror writer of all time."
"Blasphemer! No way. Don't soil the memory of Stephen King like that."
Sam looks at him funny. "Stephen King is alive."
"You know what I mean…"
"Look, the point is that Lovecraft always wrote about doors to other worlds, other dimensions. What if he knew?"
"Knew how to open Purgatory?"
"Yes!" Sam sits back for a second. "Someone has to have something on this. There's gotta be…"
Dean's phone rings and cuts Sam off. He silently cheers for the distraction to break up to monotony of the drive and the news of a horror writer he knows nothing about.
And he grins to himself without even knowing it when the letter L shows up on his phone screen.
"Hey momma," he smirks into the phone when he answers it, always happy to hear from her. "We might have something…"
"Demons are in the house."
And his heart freezes over in an instant. The frantic sound in her hushed voice combined with what she tells him… this is his nightmare. It's happening again.
"What!?" he asks with sheer alarm as Sam looks over to him instantly, wide eyes asking him for information on what's going on. One word with that much fear in it from Dean was enough to let Sam know something is very wrong.
"There's three," her voice elevates. "I don't know how but they fucking got in. Bobby was fighting them off but I think he lost. I can hear them coming up the stairs." Dean can then hear the banging on the door of whatever room she's in. "Baby… they killed Cass."
"Cass!?" Dean asks with confusion.
"Our puppy," she nearly sobs but gets control of her voice again. "Baby… Cass is dead. They fucking killed him, oh God…"
Pulling over immediately as he knows he'll run the car into a tree or a passing car if he doesn't.
"Where's Bobby now?"
"He's… I don't know. I don't know," her voice starts to panic. "I can't fight them, Dean… I can't. They could hurt Sammy. Dean, I can't let that happen…"
"No, no, don't fight them," Dean agrees. "If they aren't there to hurt you then don't fight them."
"Where are you?" she asks with clear desperation.
"Half hour out," Dean hates to tell her as he can hear a choked sob of helplessness escape her.
"They're gonna get in," Lizzy tells him, the banging getting louder by the second. "They will. Shit… what do I do!?"
"What room are you in?"
"Sammy's."
"Shit," Dean complains hard, knowing there's no weaponry in there. Lizzy refused to let there be any weapons besides salt and holy water in the room intended for their son. "Ok, ok… what about the window?"
"What about it!?"
"There's an old service truck parked nearly against the house out back. It should be under the nursery windows. Go look."
Just then he can hear the door of the bedroom burst open. He knows she's dropped the phone when he voice is farther off than before.
Stay back!
Sweetheart, you aren't gonna be that dumb and try and fight us are you?
The hell do you want!?
"L! Don't talk to them! Run!"
"Dean, what the hell's going on?" Sam asks but gets ignored. Whatever it is it's bad, really bad, and he's left in the dark for now.
No! No! Get away from me!
"Lizzy!" Dean shouts into the phone, hearing commotion once more. The sizzle of holy water and three shots are fired. She's putting up what little fight she can afford to and he knows it. "L! We're gonna come get you! Stop pissing them off!"
And then it goes silent. He hears nothing which he now realizes is much worse than the commotion from before.
"Lizzy!?" Dean yells into the phone. "L!? Baby, come on! You gotta answer me here!"
He hears the phone being handled again. Right after a very familiar voice greets him.
"Hello, Dean. Fancy a chat?"
Gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut with the utter ire boiling through his system at the sound of that voice, Dean tries to hold it together enough to get through this.
Seeing the place Dean's in, Sam takes the phone out of his hand before he crushes it with his grip and puts it on speaker so he knows what the hell is going on.
"God, how long's it been, Dean? Since my so-called demise, yes?"
"Crowley!?" Sam fires out when he hears the demon's voice on the other end.
"Ah, it's my lucky day. I get the pleasure of speaking to both you window-lickers this time. How are things, Moose? Difficult as of late I imagine."
"Where's Bobby?" Dean grits out, praying the man is still alive. Lizzy seemed unsure if he was.
"He's with your wife. Snug as a bug."
"Crowley, let them go!" Sam yells immediately into the phone with the news. He's all caught up now and hating what he's being told.
"Let 'em go now…" Dean starts, the anger clear in his voice. "Or I swear…"
"Right, right," Crowley responds with a nearly audible eye roll. "You'll rip me a cornucopia of orifices. Let's get to the bit where I tell you how this goes. You're chocolate has been in my peanut butter for far too long."
"I am going to kill you," Dean resolves to give fair warning. "I am. I'm gonna rip your fucking throat out."
"Oh Dean, ever the wit," Crowley pokes fun. "I have your… oh what are they? Not-father and not-really-legal wife, along with your not-yet-here son… and I'm keeping them until I'm satisfied that you and the lunk have backed the hell off!"
"Dean's right," Sam adds in and backs up his brother. "He's gonna kill you. And if he doesn't, then I will!"
"Last chance to let them go easy," Dean doles the final warning.
"You boys are adorable when you get all threatening," Crowley brushes them off. "Don't worry. I won't hurt them as long as the Hardy Boys stand down. Got it? Splendid. Kisses."
Looking at one another with shock and numbing fear, neither speak. Processing this new chink in the armor is impossible. Their right hand man is taken. Lizzy is taken. Sammy is taken.
Dean throws the Impala into drive and floors it, needing to get back to home base as soon as they can. They know nothing more until they do.
When the Impala pulls up to Singer Salvage the first thing Sam and Dean can see is the busted open side door. The frame is splintered with the force that had been used on it. Already it looks bad.
The engine off, both brothers fly out of the car and rush to the door.
Dean makes his way in first, taking in the sight of the destroyed kitchen first. Broken glass everywhere, the kitchen table overturned, papers and books littering the entire floor of the house.
When he turns the corner to peer into the living room Dean flinches and instantly looks away.
"Fuck!" he shouts, picking up the nearest empty whiskey bottle from the kitchen counter and sending it sailing through the air, it shattering against the study wall behind the desk.
Glancing into the living room to see what Dean's reacting so badly to Sam himself lets out a sad groan when he sees the unmoving, blood-stained body of an Australian Sheppard.
"Damn it," Sam says quietly, the loss hitting them both hard. Cass was the first pet either of them has ever managed to have for more than a couple weeks at a time.
For Sam the dog proved that things could get better. They could find normalcy somewhere within the confines of their fucked up lives. He's never had a dog and granted he'd only know the pet for a little bit, but he loved that damn animal.
But for Dean it's so much worse. As he paces the kitchen floor, unable to get back into the living room so soon after finding Cass there, he fights the urge to cry over an animal. But for him, over time, Cass had become way more to him than Lizzy's dog that she made him get. He was a companion, a friend that never once let him down, an always silent confidant and for Dean that's damn hard to come by. That dog was also the last piece he had left of his old life, the life he had with Lizzy for one beautiful year. Cass depended on them to keep him alive and happy… and they couldn't do that for him.
This is it. This is the end of hope, the end of his holding out for something better for him and his family. This just proves that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he tries, that their good life is never coming back to them. It'll always be taken away.
And all his dog wanted to do was help keep his family safe, not much unlike himself.
Sucking it up, Dean walks cautiously into the living room. He steps right up to the unmoving animal, the fur around his neck stained with red, the same color as the pool on the floor under him. Dean crouches down to the floor next to him. Scratching behind his ears like Cass always loved, Dean can't fight it anymore. The single tear makes its way down his face.
"Aw, Cass," he quickly says in a ragged voice, hating that this is how his loyal and life-saving dog had to go down. The flood gates open far too quickly to stop now. "I'm sorry buddy. This is our fault."
They never should have picked him up from the shelter. If they hadn't then Cass could be alive, running around some fenced in back yard and being spoiled by some family that loved him as much as he and Lizzy did. It's another life that's been lost because it'd come in contact with the Winchesters.
"Son of a bitch," Dean breathes deep and gets up, walking away as he can't deal with this right now. His wife is still missing.
"I can handle this," Sam tells his brother, the hits keeping on coming for him.
"You gotta get on the Purgatory thing," Dean tell Sam as he marches off to the basement.
"What!?" Sam asks with shock that Dean would tell him to do such a thing as he follows him down to the horde of weaponry Bobby has stocked downstairs. "You're going after them by yourself?"
"Yes."
"You gotta be nuts if you think I'm gonna let you do this alone!"
"What the hell choice do we have!?" Dean asks in a panic as he grabs the nearest duffel and starts packing anything he can find that'd be effective against demons.
"No way," Sam denies. "We're gonna get them back together…"
"Sam, this is a pretty fucking big ball to drop here," Dean reminds him, pausing to look him straight in the eye. "Cass is way ahead of us already. You gotta do this, man."
They stare at each other, coming to terms with the idea that they have to separate and handle this on their own. Dean will get their family back… and Sam will save the world yet again.
What could go wrong?