Mid-morning Dean stirs. He rolls over onto his side to drape an arm over Lizzy's frame through his still sleep drenched mind and instead of her warm body, his hand hits the mattress. The jolt of her absence hits him fast and hard. Eyes flying open, he can see that the other side of the bed is empty. Dean sits up with a start and when he sees the dark bathroom with wide open door his heart begins to pound rapidly in his chest.

"Sam," Dean calls out to his sleeping brother in the bed next to his. Sam moves a little and groans but doesn't open his eyes. "Sammy, get up."

He didn't need to be told again. Sam sits tall with the tone of Dean's voice and looks over at his brother with alarm. "Where's Lizzy?" he questions sharply as the slumber starts to clear and realizes the group is one member short.

"I was gonna ask you the same thing," Dean tells him.

"Hey," Sam nods to the motel room door behind Dean. Dean turns and looks, seeing a note stabbed into the door with one of the small silver knives she had been armed with the day before. He's on his feet in a split second, tearing the note off the door and reading it.

"Dean?" Sam questions, needing to know what was written on the back of an old receipt.

"Shit," Dean laments downtrodden, looking back to Sam once he's done reading. "Knew this what gonna happen."

"What? Where is she?"

"She's got herself holed up somewhere," Dean explains. "Note says she needed a few days away and not to worry about her. Says she has to be alone."

"Why?" Sam wonders, not understanding.

"She's doing her depression thing, just like I knew she eventually would," Dean tells his brother. "It's about Lou. I should've seen it coming. She was all kinds of off last night before we fell asleep. She disappears when in this mindset and practically drinks herself comatose." Dean crumples the note and throws it in frustration.

"Great," Sam complains as he lies back in bed heavily. He knew she did this when Lou died, and when Dean went to hell. It was the only times in those difficult four months that she wouldn't answer the phone when he called her. And it was ugly every time. "You know where she is?"

"She didn't say, but I'm sure I can figure it out." Dean begins moving around the room to pack his things. "Come on, let's check out of here and get to her."

"Lizzy'll be pissed if we come get her," Sam thinks aloud. "Lou meant the world to her, Dean. You sure we shouldn't just give her some time?"

"Lou would never want L to drink herself to death all alone, or ignore her injury and get it infected because she was depressed," Dean rebuts. "I'm not letting her go through this alone. She shouldn't be alone right now."

It's more than that though. Dean's worried about her state of mind. Life has gotten bad recently, really bad. He's uneasy with the thought of her being on her own, her thoughts allowed to rule her completely. He needs to get to her.

"Ok," Sam says, finally getting out of bed. "You sure you can figure out where she is?"

"There are two people in this world I know better than myself, Sammy," Dean confidently announces. "Trust me, I'll find her."

It's dark in the room and it's just what she needed. She can barely see anything and if she keeps drinking maybe, just maybe, she won't be able to feel anything either. A girl can hope, can't she?

Once Lizzy decided to sneak out in the middle of the night, she caught a cab to a hotel on the other side of the city, one that had a liquor store nearby and was of a higher quality than they were used to, just to throw them off her trail. She bought herself a few bottle of Lou's favorite booze and checked in using a name she's never used before in the hopes to give herself a few days away from the Winchesters. She loved them both, God did she, but time off is necessary right now. Plus, if they were around they'd never let her act the troubling way she wanted to. Lizzy aches to just hide away in a cocoon of booze, sleep, and self-loathing depression before she goes back to her very difficult and ever stressful life.

Lou still remained in the forefront of her mind every day. After her parents died, she was told over and over by consoling individuals that it would get easier, just give it time. And they were right, it did. She thought about the pain of their loss less and less as the days, months, years went on. She's come to accept it as much as any person can accept the tragic loss of their family members. But the loss of Louie, well that just never got better. If anything it hurt more over time. As life keeps hammering away at her, creating new and even more terrible issues on an almost weekly basis, she longed for her best friend more than ever. Her sister. Her total source of strength throughout her life. Sam was always comforting and Dean made life infinitely better, but without Lou it was incomplete. It was always going to suck. It was always going to be partially empty.

Lying on her side in the fetal position facing away from the door, she lifts her head slightly to take down more Jack Daniels, the liquor burning its way down her throat. This place she's in is sad and pathetic, but safe. No one's there to judge or make her act in any way other than how she wants to. She wants to stay here forever, forget the ending world exists at all, and drink away the horrible loss that plagues her daily.

Pulling her out of her desolate thoughts is the sound of a key card being slid into her hotel room door. Fuck, she thinks. They couldn't even give her twenty-four hours alone? Hunters suck. They can figure anything out, especially a missing person, especially a missing person that they know well.

The door creeks open slowly and then it's silent. Sam and Dean stand there at the threshold, peering in on her curled up figure with her back to them. The shades are drawn to make the room nearly black and they aren't sure what to do.

"Either come in or shut the fucking door," Lizzy quietly grumbles to them with another tilt of the bottle and the brothers look to each other with questioning looks.

"Give me five minutes?" Sam asks of Dean in a whisper. Dean thinks it over quickly, looking at Lizzy first then nodding in agreement. More and more, Sam and Lizzy seem to relate to each other. Maybe he can talk some sense into her.

"I'll go get you a room," Dean whispers back. "You shouldn't be in here for this."

"Ok," Sam agrees.

"I'm drunk, not deaf," Lizzy calls over to them in her slurring voice, annoyed that they're talking about her while she's in their presence and even more annoyed that they are invading her space. "Idiots." She takes another swig as Sam cautiously enters the room and Dean leaves for the front office.

Sam shuts the door quietly behind him and walks to the bed she's on, standing behind her.

"I miss her too," Sam shares his simple yet loaded statement with Lizzy.

"I'm sure you do," Lizzy responds while looking at the ugly, yellowing wallpaper covered wall in her line of sight.

"Sometimes," Sam begins while taking a seat on the bed next to her, Lizzy making no attempt to face him. "I have these dreams about her. They're really vivid, really… real. Like she's still here."

"Well, she's not," Lizzy bitingly responds, more Jack being taken down. "Cas made sure to tell me she isn't."

"I know, and when I wake up from these dreams, I always wish I'd never had them," he continues explaining. "They tear me apart every damn time and I can't stop them from coming."

Lizzy closes her eyes. Tear drops make their way out and fall onto the pillow under her head with his words. She sometimes forgets that she isn't the only one suffering with Lou's death still.

"She's always there, always right in the forefront of my thoughts," Sam admits to her. "And worst of all, I'm left feeling like I took advantage of her when she was still alive."

"You didn't," Lizzy's quiet voice tells him.

"But I did," Sam returns. "I never told her how I felt. I never let her know. She died not having a clue of how amazing I thought she was, or how important she was to me."

"Don't dwell," Lizzy plainly states with a hint of impatience. "She knew."

"How could she?" Sam asks.

"She felt the same, Sam." Lizzy pulls down more liquor and Sam has the urge to steal the bottle from her. He decides it wouldn't be worth the beating she'd give him. That can be Dean's department. "Don't regret what you didn't say. She fucking knew all along."

"Why didn't she tell me?" Sam says, keeping his emotions in check as much as possible. He came in there to be strong for her, not fall apart with her.

"Same reason you didn't. She may not have fully recognized it before it was too late, but I could see through it. She was in love."

Sam stays quiet for a moment, the revelation hitting him hard as he drops a hand on her hip. He tells himself to focus as this visit isn't about his feelings for Lou. It is about Lizzy's behavior and making sure she's alright.

"You should stay with us," Sam suggests, trying to get her out of her low state while rubbing his palm against her jeans. "Get sober, head to the next hunt. Get back to normal."

"That's a shitty normal," Lizzy tells him, tone still deep and sad.

"But it's our normal," he reminds her. "C'mon, get up. We'll stay another day or two and hit the road again."

"No."

"Lizzy, you know that she wouldn't want this for you," Sam says, trying a different angle now.

"Don't fucking care."

"She'd be pissed, actually."

"I don't care anymore! She's not here," Lizzy takes down several gulps and Sam becomes more concerned than before. She's nearly done with her first bottle, a bottle that was meant to last much longer than half a day. "Stop being so God damn nice, Sam."

"I'm just saying maybe you should slow down."

"And I'm saying maybe you should leave."

Sam feels her icy cold words hit him hard. She's drunk. She's mourning still. She needs Dean. He's willing to recognize when he's useless in a situation and this is clearly one of those situations.

"Alright," Sam says, squeezing her hip once before standing back up. He pauses before he leaves the room. "Just… be careful with yourself. Some of us still need you. More than you know."

Lizzy huffs a patronizing laugh and Sam makes his way out the door, stopping to quietly grab the still unopened bottle on the table by the door and feeling like a hurt child with her words all the while.

One look at Sam's face as he waits in front of Lizzy's door and Dean knows how bad it really is. Sam says nothing to his brother when he gets back from the check-in desk. He just exchanges the untouched Jack Daniel's bottle for the keycard to the room next door with a sad look before disappearing into it. Dean then stands outside Lizzy's door for a moment before placing the full bottle on the hallway carpet and quietly entering.

"Leave me alone, Dean," Lizzy says to him, knowing it was his turn to come and try to talk some sense into her.

"Nope," he simply answers, dropping his bag next to hers by the doorway. He takes out a large canister of salt from his duffel and starts lining all the possible entrances of the room. Fuck the world right now. This time it needs to be just them and all he wants is to help her past this depression without supernatural interruptions.

"Please," Lizzy begs in a pathetic tone, wanting desperately to be alone. "Just… go away."

"Not a chance," he returns as he pours salt across the doorway.

Lizzy doesn't try again. She just lays there, almost empty bottle in hand and listens to him moving around the room as he lines the windows.

Once done, Dean walks over to the side of the bed Lizzy is facing and sits on the floor so that they are face to face.

"Hand it over," he says unflinchingly, holding his hand out to her for the bottle in her grasp.

"Touch it and you die," she warns him, grasp on the glass container tightening.

"Fine, you're almost done anyways," Dean gives in. "But after that, you're cut off."

"Fuck you," Lizzy drunkenly spits back, angry that he's trying to take control of the situation. "I didn't ask you to come here and police me."

"Well ain't love just a son of a bitch then. Deal with it," Dean rebuts, not giving in to his desire to be nice, to hug her, to be comforting to her. This time it has to be tough love all the way for Lizzy, as much as it kills him. Luckily it's extremely rare that she makes him act this way.

Just to spite the man in front of her, Lizzy eyes him challengingly and lifts the bottle, chugging down the rest of the liquor while staring him down. Dean sighs while shaking his head.

"You're gonna regret that," Dean tells her, knowing the hangover she'll have tomorrow is going to be awful. He takes the empty bottle from her and stands up.

"No I won't," Lizzy returns like a stubborn child.

"Good one," Dean sarcastically remarks while tossing the bottle into the trash can.

Lizzy sits up, the room spinning fast circles as she does, and looks over to the empty table by the door. "Where's my Jack?"

"Gone," Dean tells her, walking to the door to grab both their bags and drop them onto what is now designated as his bed.

"The balls on you," Lizzy grumbles as she gets out of bed, faltering as she does. Dean swiftly walks to her, grabbing her bicep to prevent her from falling and Lizzy sloppily shrugs off his attempts. "Get away from me."

Dean releases his grip on her and lets her pass, assuming she was heading to the bathroom. Instead she takes a stumbling turn toward the room door.

"Where you going?" Dean asks her.

"To get my booze back," Lizzy slurs out as she grabs the doorknob and pulls. Dean rushes to the door and pushes it shut before she can open it all the way. "Seriously, what the fuck, Dean?"

"You're not going out like this," dean tells her. "You're a mess."

"Takes one to know one," Lizzy fires back at him. "Let me out."

"No," Dean stands his ground, palm still pressed to the door.

"Dean," Lizzy warns. "Let me out." Her eyes glare at him with hatred.

"Not happening," he glares right back. Lizzy tried her best to push him, but her inebriated state makes her much weaker than she normally is. This only frustrates her more.

"Fuck!" Lizzy shouts as her anger claims her and tries to take an uncoordinated swing at him. Dean easily catches her forearm midair.

"Swing all you want, L, but I'm not letting you leave," Dean informs her, releasing her arm.

"You are not my fucking guardian, ok!" Lizzy says winding up again and Dean's had it. He's not going to physically fight her while this inebriated. Grabbing tightly to her upper arms while pinned to her sides, he lifts her off the floor and walks until they reach her bed. He then forces her down to sit on the bottom edge while leaning down to face her.

"You're acting like a child," he informs her after treating her much like one.

"And you're acting like a real asshole," she returns, rolling her freshly injured shoulder he just grabbed her by. If she wasn't so drunk, that might have seriously hurt.

"Get your shit together, would you?" Dean asks of her, letting her go and standing tall in front of her. "This isn't you. I hate when you act like this."

"That's why I left to be alone," she glares back at him. "So I wouldn't get the lecture or the fucking guilt trip from you and Sam."

"We're not trying to guilt you, L," Dean angrily informs her. "We just want you to be smart, and safe, and not drink yourself to death. Lou would want the same."

"And she's gone," Lizzy spits back. "So who gives a fuck?"

Dean's anger threatens to topple him as he leans forward, grabbing her left forearm tightly and pulling it in front of her face, forcing her to look at the image of Lou she had tattooed on it in her memory.

"No she isn't," he loudly tells her as he watches Lizzy close her eyes, unable to look at her friend's face. "She's only gone if you forget her. You'll never forget her, L. Never. What you should be doing is honoring her by not being a drunken waste of space. You should be out there fighting, not practically killing yourself all alone."

"I fucking hate you, you know that?" Lizzy says quietly after pausing to think. She knows he's telling her the truth but she doesn't want to hear it right now. Instead, she pulls out the big guns and aims to hurt him as much as possible for making her feel badly about her decision to hole up alone. Dean freezes with her horrible statement, pausing to stop himself from overreacting to her overly harsh words.

"You don't mean that," Dean returns while dropping her arm and staring back at her for a moment. He makes his way to his bed and drops back down exasperated, trying to separate himself from the stranger in the next bed. Lizzy curls up once more with her back to him on her own mattress, not wanting to see the man that's angering her at the moment.

"Yes I do," Lizzy rebuts lowly. "You ruined my life."

"Lizzy, stop saying things you don't mean because you're drunk and pissed off," Dean tells her as he sits up against the headboard.

"I'm not, I mean it," Lizzy further insults while refusing to look at him.

Dean closes his eyes and bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something out of sheer vengeance. She doesn't mean any of it, not a word, but it still hurts. Hard. Instead of feed into her hatred, Dean takes up the remote and turns on the TV to distract himself as he prepares to wait out her miserable drunkenness.

"My life would have been so much better if I never met you or Sam."

"Just go to sleep already, would you?" Dean calls over to her with the stab in the heart she deals out.

"Don't tell me what to do," Lizzy quietly says to him as her voice gets quieter.

After a few minutes of channel surfing, Dean hears her even breathing and knows she's out. Thank God, he thinks. That mouth of hers should be considered a weapon.

Dean does what he can to get her more comfortable. He takes off her boots, manages to pull the covers out from under her, and then drape them over her body. Walking away briefly to turn on the air conditioner as she always overheats when she's drunk, he takes a seat next to her sleeping body. Her face looks peaceful in the moment but he knows it's just a mask. On the inside, she's a disaster that has been reduced to solitary binge drinking just to get by when the world crushes her usually strong persona.

Brushing her hair out of her face he's overwhelmed with his love for this one person. Even with the horrific things she just said to him, it changes nothing. He still loves her completely. She's just broken, much like he is, so he understands. Her anger may have been displaced onto him this time, but if that's what it takes for her to get it out that's fine with him. She can tell him she hates him every day if it made her better. He just wanted her to be better, to live better, to be happy. He had never been able to fully grasp exactly how his father could go so far off the deep end when his mother died until now. If anything ever took her from him, he'd be the very same way. He'd never stop until the thing that took her felt his pain. And now he fully understands Sam also. Jessica's death changed him. He was determined and unforgiving… and downright terrifying. If only Dean knew then what he knows now, he'd have been much more accepting of Sam's behavior and mental state. God damn, that kid has been through way too much.

Maybe the evil world was out to get the two of them like Lizzy said before, but he'll fight tooth and nail to keep her if it is. She deserves the fucking world on a plate, and that longing to give her just that still nagged at him every day. He's seen her suffer through so much and give up even more just to be with him and fight for what's right.

She is a good woman, better than he deserves, and he needs to let her know just that.

Getting an idea, Dean gets off the bed slowly, careful not to wake her, and heads out the door into the hallway. He pulls his phone from his pocket and dials.

"Hey Bobby," Dean says when he gets an answer. "Oh yeah, vaca's been great." He'd rather not explain the whole ordeal right now. "Um, so I got a question for you. I know you have a bunch of Dad's stuff down in the basement, right? I was wondering if you had something there that I'm looking for…"