Eyes fluttering open, or rather eye fluttering open as the other is swollen shut, Lizzy looks up at the wooden ceiling above her. She can't remember where she is. This isn't her room at Bobby's. And the bed under her is awfully uncomfortable.

What the hell just happened?

Lizzy attempts to sit up and the second she does the fire in her side flares up to an excruciating level. She inhales hard with a rasp at how badly she's hurting and lays back down. "Fuck. Oh… shiiiit," she hisses out and holds her side lightly.

"L!?" Dean's panicky voice can suddenly be heard somewhere in the room but Lizzy can't see him. She just sees an empty cabin. "Mm, uh, Lizzy!?"

Dean's mussed up bed-head pops up into view from the floor and Lizzy jumps a little with it.

"Ow!" she says with the jump, her body flaring with pain.

"Hey, easy!" Dean immediately says to her and is on his knees, leaning over the couch and making sure she relaxes back down before further hurting herself. "Lay down. All the way."

"What… the hell?"

"What?" Dean asks her, already pulling up her shirt to check on her side.

"Why are you on the floor? Fuck!" Lizzy complains when he presses too hard on her ribs.

"Damn it, sorry," he immediately says, lifting his hands off of her. "I barely touched you."

"Yeah, well, trust me when I say they're broken," she struggles out, taking even shallow breaths to recuperate. "Fuck… everything hurts."

"Stay put. I'll get you some pain killers and more ice."

"I need to pee."

Dean nods and thinks. "Can you hold off a little bit? Get meds in your system and then go?"

Lizzy nods, her face screwed up in agony and Dean's flying around getting ice and water for her to swallow her pills.

As she concentrates on breathing so that her side didn't hurt so damn much she can hear a tiny, small bit of fussing from the floor. She would smile if her mouth wasn't so damaged. Dean and Sammy slept downstairs all night. They never left her side.

"Ok, we're gonna go really slow," Dean warns her as he places the bowl of ice, dish towels, and her glass of water on the floor. He then helps her move, inch by inch, until she's seated upright with her feet on the floor. After the white hot pain subsides she takes a look and sees her little boy, wide awake on the floor atop their comforter from upstairs and looking around the room, his feet kicking away.

"Did he sleep through the night?" she asks hopefully, not remembering anything after taking her pills last night and Dean telling her to rest.

"Yeah… no way," Dean huffs a small laugh. "He woke up twice."

"I didn't even hear him."

"You were knocked out pretty hard," Dean tells her, handing over two pills and the water. "That happens when you save an entire house of people from a god all by yourself."

"So all it took was killing a god to earn myself one uninterrupted night?" Lizzy asks as she puts the pills in her mouth and struggles a bit to swallow the water down.

"Yep," Dean says with a smile despite his worries. His heart hurts with how much pain she's in. He'd take it all from her and double it if he could.

"I gotta kill more gods."

"Motherhood, huh?" he jokes and just smirks at her with her attitude despite how she must feel. "What hurts the most?"

"Ribs. Definitely."

"From what I can tell they aren't displaced so…"

"I just have to wait it out. I know," Lizzy says, eying her son. "He hungry?"

"Probably, but he can eat after I check you over." Dean takes the glass from her and sets it aside. "Your face is a mess."

"If that's how you talk to women then I don't get the extensive past."

Dean just shoots her a look. "Your eye is barely open."

"I don't think the socket's broken or anything though."

"Good. And your jaw is bruised up pretty badly and you got a really fat lip."

"My teeth are a little loose I think. Fucking bitch had a hell of right hook." She begins tracing the new contours of her face with light fingertips and sighs. "Uh. I'm Joseph Merrick."

"No, you're fine. Just… rearranged a little," Dean tells her, sitting on the coffee table across from her.

Lizzy stops worrying for a second as she watches her husband pick up Sammy and place him in his lap. She looks at him and her mood shifts. "I hate our life."

"It isn't great," Dean agrees, looking at Sammy also. "I… I fucked this all up. I shouldn't have gone."

"It's over," Lizzy shrugs, not wanting to rehash that whole conversation again.

"It is over," Dean says sincerely, looking right at her. "I'm out."

She looks at him with shock. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… I quit. I'm not doing this shit anymore. I put your life and Sammy's life in jeopardy and that's not something I can handle. I'm done."

She stares at him for a minute, afraid to accept this.

"I thought you'd be, I don't know… happy or something," Dean says with disappointment when she doesn't let on to what she's thinking. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

"I want nothing more than for you to ditch this life," Lizzy explains herself. "But I need you to do this for you. Not for me and Sammy. If you don't do this because you want this… then it'll never work. You'll never be happy."

Dean glances at Sammy and composes his thoughts, making sure she understands him clearly. "The only thing I need to make me happy is my family. Without you…." He stops for a second. "I need you. I need Sammy. That's it."

She actually believes him and he can tell.

"And Baby," he adds in.

Lizzy rolls her eyes and tries to smile, humming with pain when she does. "Ok, then… we get out. We get in Baby and we run away."

"When you're better," Dean stipulates. "You aren't going anywhere until you're ready to."

"Fair enough," she agrees. They both look at each other and the tension that has been building between them with their disagreement over hunting is gone. For the first time they are totally on the same page. They'll figure out the details later, explain to their little family in the cabin that they're leaving… and they go.

"Can I ask you something?" Dean starts as he thinks something over from the previous day. The memories of it all just won't seem to leave him alone, especially the whole coming to and finding his wife in the condition she was in.

"Always."

"Why didn't the Fury try and guilt you too?" Dean asks, knowing that if she did Lizzy wouldn't have been able to kill her off. "I mean, the rest of us fell apart under her spell."

"Oh, she tried," Lizzy answers. "She tried but… it didn't take."

Dead looks at her with shock. "The hell are you talking about?"

She shrugs with only her shoulder on her healthy side. "She tried to guilt me but it didn't work on me."

"Why not?" he questions, not understanding at all.

"I don't carry guilt with me anymore," Lizzy explains. "I let it all go."

"How?"

"I had a son," Lizzy tells him. "I've realized that I don't have time to be burdened by guilt anymore."

The incredulous face Dean gives her lets her know he doesn't understand this at all.

"I'm not saying I haven't fucked up," she tells him. "I still think that my fate has caused a lot of death and destruction. My parents, Lou's parents, Lou, every innocent person I couldn't save… but in the end a lot of that was caused by the fact that God's a dick to me. He set me up for failure, you too." Dean nods at her, getting that. "And the rest of it… well, I've always had the best of intentions. All I've ever done is try and do the right thing. Sometimes I didn't but I did try. I never sat by and didn't act. Maybe I should feel guilty as hell for some things but… I don't anymore. I've been through enough. I need to be a good mom and for me personally that means ditching my guilt."

Dean cups her face on her undamaged side, adoring her more than ever.

"So she couldn't get to me. I don't have any guilt for her to work with."

Leaning forward, Dean presses a kiss to the right corner of her mouth, the only part that isn't bruised and swollen.

"Hot Shot?" Lizzy speaks up.

"Yeah?"

"Can you help to me to the bathroom now?" she asks lightly. "I'm gonna explode."

Dean huffs a laugh and gets up to put Sammy in his carrier. "Come on up, gimpy."

"Fuck that name," Lizzy grumbles and he grabs her, slowly getting her on her feet.

"Sorry," he says once she's up, an arm around her shoulders. "You prefer punching bag?"

"I prefer the most beautiful woman in the world," Lizzy rebuts, finally finding that ease within their relationship that she's been missing for a while now.

"Not right now you aren't!" Dean tells her and she tries to hit him, hurting her side in the process.

"Fuck you," she says, blaming him for that moment of pain. "Just get me to the bathroom so I can feed Sammy. He'll wake the damn cabin soon if I don't."

"Ok, ok," Dean relents as they make their slow way. "You wanna eat something too? Probably should with the pain killers you just took."

"Eating is gonna hurt so bad," she complains a bit, not looking forward to it.

"Then… scrambled eggs?" Dean suggests something soft and easy.

"I can do that."

"Scrambled eggs it is," he says to her as they walk through the bathroom door together.

Key word there… together.

A day later and the group finds themselves outside in the early spring morning. Once Lizzy was mobile she insisted on moving around for a little while despite her pain. She knew if she didn't there could be some serious complications and none of them can risk heading out to a hospital right now. Never know what's lurking in those places that just want to eat you for dinner.

"You got it?" Dean asks her with serious concern, staying very close to her just in case she needed help.

She just smiles and arches her unhurt eyebrow, telling him he's been too much. She adores his concern but sometimes he's a little intense.

Dean rolls his eyes as she silently tells him to calm down.

Once they join the rest of the house already out back, Sammy in Bobby's arms as that seems to be his default when not with his parents lately, Dean sighs a little as he pulls out a worn, old wallet and a dusty Phillie's hat with the team's late nineties logo on it.

"They were good guys," Dean says to their group as he holds the items in his hands, all of them around a small fire Sam got going just for this purpose. "Really good. And… they shouldn't be gone."

He pauses, his voice choked a bit and he swallows it down. He thinks hard about it, about how Buck and Wade lived their lives and how it ends for them. No one will know them. No one beside these people around the fire and a few others out in the shadows could understand what they've done. And what do they leave the world? A few less monsters… and a hat and a wallet.

Dean doesn't want that to become him.

"They deserve to move on. Rest easy," Dean says. "They've earned that."

Bobby holds his grandson tighter and watches on, hating that he has to bid farewell to yet two more friends. His life has been nothing but loss.

Without another word, Dean drops the items into the fire, destroying what he thinks are the only things that could keep two good men tied to this twisted Earth. The hunters all stand around and watch as the flames do their work.

Dropping an arm around Lizzy's shoulders, Dean looks at her questioningly. She peers back up at him and nods slightly, having talked over the situation enough in the past day to know that their decision is final and a good one. If he can handle this change then she's fully in and they can figure it out.

"Uh…" Dean starts and clears his throat. "L and I wanted… to tell you guys something." The three others look up from the fire and at Dean. "We talked about it… and after the past few days we decided... we can't do this."

"Do what?" Sam asks immediately, his heart almost skipping with what he prays his brother is about to say.

"This," he points to the freshly dug and covered over grave just feet away that holds the Fury. "All of this." He waves his arm at the old, small cabin. He glances at Sammy as Lizzy leans her unharmed side into him. "This life isn't safe for us. It's not safe for Sammy. That Fury found him and who's to say that if we stay in this life we won't lead another monster to our doorstep."

"We have to be parents first now," Lizzy says to the ground, unable to look at her sister for this. She just got Lou back and the idea of not being with her every day kills her. But she's a mom. Tough decisions are in her new job description. "So we're leaving."

"What?" Lou asks, her chest filled with panic. "Leaving where?"

"We don't know yet," Dean tells her. "But it'll be somewhere off the grid a bit. Somewhere safer. Somewhere…."

"That we aren't," Sam says, his eyes widened with the same panic Lou is feeling. "You're running from us."

"No, no," Lizzy denies immediately. "That's not it at all. We're not running from you guys. You're our family and we don't… we just…." She looks at Lou and her eyes water instantly with how hurt she looks already. "If we stay with you… we'll be hunting. And we both are not gonna hunt anymore. We can't."

Dean can feel the eyes on him instantly.

"You're really out?" Bobby asks him, the older man's voice so full of hope that it's refreshing.

Dean nods. "I have to be."

"Well I'll be damned," Bobby answers, looking down at Sammy. His heart drops with the idea that he won't see the little boy all that often once they go but that the same time it lifts with the idea that he'll be safe, truly safe, for the first time in his short life.

It's silent in the small circle as everyone settles in with the idea for a moment.

"Wait," Lou shakes her head as she takes a few steps around the fire towards her sister. "You're just gonna pack up and go? When… when will we see you guys?"

They don't necessarily have an answer for that. "Once we figure out where we're going we'll let you know," Dean says to them. "We find a secure place, settle in, then… you can come see us anytime."

Lou huffs a laugh and walks away for a second, hating this already.

"You gotta go deep," Sam says, looking at his brother with a very serious face. "You do this… you don't fuck it up."

"I wouldn't," Dean promises him, knowing Sam will have his back on this play.

"I mean it. You gotta… ward wherever you set up, against angels and demons and everything else in between. You gotta change you names, change your license plates…"

"We'll do it all," Lizzy assures him. "We'll be safer than ever. We just can't keep doing this to Sammy anymore." She speaks to Sam while her eyes follow Lou closely, her sister pacing the tree line as she looks about ready to crumble.

Sam nods and, despite his fear of being without Dean in their fucked up world, he can see that this has to happen. Nothing is more important than keeping that little boy safe. They're good parents for doing this.

"I'll hook you up with a guy I know. Frank," Bobby lets them know. "He can get you some new identities. He's real good, can even get you in the system so this guy can go to school when the time comes."

"That would be awesome," Lizzy smiles for the first time in this conversation. Anytime she sees hope for Sammy she's at her happiest.

"Honestly, this whole thing is awesome," Bobby tells her, rubbing Sammy's back. "I'm not sayin' I'm ready to bid farewell to seeing this one everyday… but if he's safe it don't matter. I'll get over it. Plus I'll get to spoil him every time I visit. I'll have an excuse to." He smiles at Sammy and the baby reaches for his beard, grasping a hand into it.

"Thank you, Bobby," Lizzy gratefully says, her eyes welling up with how kind he's being about this very difficult decision.

"How long before you leave?" Sam asks them, his mind already churning with ways to make this easy and safe for them. Planning is way easier than dwelling on the moment of their departure anyways.

"When L's ready," Dean answers him. "We're not taking any family road trips when every bump in the road will feel like a knife in the side."

"So… about a week then? Maybe two?" Sam thinks aloud. "We can get you set up by then. We'll get you everything you need, find you a destination that'll be safe, get you some money to start off…"

"No," Lou finally speaks up as she start to march back towards the circle. "You guys can't leave yet."

"Louie," Lizzy's voice says with sorrow. "Please don't make this harder…"

"I just got you back!" she says to her sister. "I lost you for four years! I just get you back and, and you wanna leave?"

"It's not about want," Lizzy reminds her, letting her know how much she's about to miss her too.

"I… fuck, Lizzy! You're gonna take my nephew away?" she asks, her own eyes red and ready to overflow. "I just met him."

"Oh, Louie…" Lizzy starts to cry. "I know. I don't want to take him away from his family, I don't."

Lou stands there, hands on hips, and stares at Lizzy for a moment. She understands, she does, but the panic and fear don't let her gracefully accept this yet. "What am I gonna do without you?"

Lizzy lets out a sob at the idea alone. "What am I gonna do with you?" she turns it right around. "Please don't make this worse than it already is, Louie. It hurts. I don't want to leave you… but I have to. I know you understand. I know you do."

Lou nods rapidly and blinks away her tears before she breaks down. "Yeah, I get it. I just fucking hate it."

Lizzy takes a deep breath before shaking her head. "I have to go inside."

She turns away from the group and makes her slow way towards the cabin. Once she's gone Dean looks at Lou. "What the hell?"

"Screw you, douche bag," Lou responds as she goes back to her default.

"This was a really tough decision for her to make. You need to know that."

She looks at Dean with heartache. "I've missed her every day for four years. I missed her wedding, my nephew being born… I missed so much. I didn't mean to make it worse but what the hell did you expect from me? A smile and a wave while I send you off to who knows where? I'll never see her. I'll barely see Sammy and… holy shit, I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but… I'll never see you either."

This one actually hits Dean right in the heart. Lou admitted she'll miss him.

"I don't want to let you guys just go and, and… I'm not ready for that," she truthfully explains.

"Neither are we," Dean admits, eyes shooting over to his brother. Lizzy isn't the only one ready to leave their sibling. "But we all agree that Sammy comes first. His safety is everything."

Lou nods in agreement.

"So… we have to do this. I know myself. If I stay here, see you guys hunting… I won't stay put. I'll be out there with you and that's not an option anymore. After this last hunt we all know that's true."

"No one's arguing that," Sam assures his big brother, the one who's having to make yet another horribly difficult decision based on what's best for his family. "We're just surprised. This is a big change. A good one but, still… big."

"You guys supporting us would go really far. Especially with L right now. You think this is tough on you guys, ha," Dean tells them, making sure they understand the toll this is taking on his wife.

"We know Liz," Bobby confirms for him. "We're all gonna make sure we don't make her feel bad about doing what's right here." He looks pointedly at Lou.

Lou just shakes her head and walks off towards the woods.

"Where you going?" Sam asks her as she marches on without stopping. "Lou!" Sam calls to her and she pulls her handgun out of the back of her jeans and holds it up for him to see before replacing it, walking the whole time. She then disappears into the trees.

"She just needs a minute, man," Dean tells Sam. He's the same way. When things get overwhelming he disappears and needs time to think.

"She's gonna be a mess with this," Sam says, worrying already.

"Yeah but she'll get over it." Dean looks at Sam for a second. "How 'bout you?" he questions, locking eyes with his brother solidly for the first time through this conversation.

Sam just stares back for a minute. "It'll be weird."

"Yeah," Dean huffs out, knowing that being without Sam has always felt weird to him.

"But it's not about me," Sam tells him, making sure his brother doesn't worry about him within this decision. "It's about you. It's about Sammy. It's about living your life the way you should. I think this is the best thing you and Lizzy could do right now."

"Yeah?" Dean asks.

"Yeah. Definitely," Sam smiles small. "You got my blessing or whatever."

Dean nods, looking down at the fire as it eats the last evidence of Buck and Wade's existence on the Earth. "You know… when you're ready… we'll have room for you." Dean looks his brother hard in the eye, making sure he gets it.

Sam huffs a laugh. "Alright." He doesn't know if the day will come that he'll be able to take up that offer but it's there and that's comforting in its own way.

"Well, looks like we got some planning to do," Bobby says with a hint of excitement, walking towards the house with Sammy. He's not gonna put this kid down for the next week or two, not until he has to say goodbye to him.

The men get back into the cabin, letting the fire put itself out, and Sam shoots a text to Lou.

If you need me you just let me know.

It isn't for another twenty minutes that he gets one back.

I'm fine.

And that's exactly how he knows she's not.

THE END

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