Chapter Two
"What did you do, Dean?" She cried the last words because she knew.
She remembered the voice, the electricity and the way it filled her every muscle when the decision to hurt Dean entered her mind. It was a legend, a myth, she found in one of Bobby's old lore books. They had laughed about it so easily then, how there was absolutely no way it could be true. How horrible it would be to have your free will removed, to be owned by another being.
"You…bought…me? You tethered my soul?" She whispered it to the floor, defeated, tears slowly making their way over her beaten down wall. Sam winced and froze in his stance, unsure of how he could help in this moment. Absent-mindedly twiddling a seam on his suit with a thread he always meant to fix but forgot about after the job was done.
Dean broke.
"IT WAS CROWLEY! I JUST COULDN'T STAND THE THOUGHT OF-" He was cut off when a pair of arms enveloped his shoulders, her head came crashing into him and for a second he almost fell backwards. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He cried. The tears that he had held onto for months, a whole YEAR, poured from his eyes and into her hair. Sam had excused himself to keep watch outside.
They held onto each other and Elizabeth cried for all the lost time, cried because they were finally here. In a little house, in a little town, and she was finally a teacher. She followed her dreams and set up the life they always fantasized about, and he felt like he ruined it. His stupid life struck again and showed him that he, and anyone else who ever met him, could never be happy. Elizabeth had left for school a year before Sam. Dean always thought it was so fitting for Bobby's daughter, the hunter equivalent of a teacher. She was a semester from graduating when John disappeared and when she saw how afraid Dean was, he couldn't keep her from coming along.
I didn't want this life. Not without you. That's the only reason I did ANY of this, it was for you. I don't like beer or pie enough for a convention of it and I certainly could care less about the old west.
But you did it. You got out. You bought a house and got a 9-5 and I tried to let you have it and I wasn't strong enough. I ruined it.
Elizabeth stopped, "You tried to let me have it?" He nodded, and she continued before she lost her nerve. "You knew I was here?" He nodded again, not sure what to say. "Just tell me everything that happened, where were you? When did you get back? Why did you ignore me? I assume you got all those horrible voicemails. You have to understand, I thought you both were dead. I thought I might as well have been talking to a wall."
His eyes closed, and he leaned his forehead to hers, for the first time thankful for the ludicrous bond they shared. Suddenly her vision was full of memories, but she didn't recognize them. She blinked and gasped and almost pulled away, but Dean held her in place and fed them to her. The complete, unabridged recollection of what he had been through the last two years. Benny and Cas in purgatory, Sam's sabbatical and how pissed at him Dean was for leaving the life. For abandoning her. The whole past year they spent looking for a way to close the gates of hell.
As the images passed through her, the emotions left. The anger and the confusion were replaced with sympathy, love and gratitude. She saw herself through his eyes a year ago. She was sitting at a desk in a dusty college library studying for the Praxis. A man brought her a coffee and she remembered that night, too. He was just some pushy jock and she hadn't even bothered to get his name. Three months Dean had spent looking for any alternative, the amount of sacrifice the actual ritual took, and she saw him buying her soul.
The process was hard, and it took him hours of concentration and liters of blood. In the memory, he recited the spell and imagined the details she had told him about the ring years before, on repeat, for hours and slowly the ring forged from the blood, and the pieces of his soul. Her eyes started to tear up again, but this time it was with guilt. His most recent memories slipped through before he could stop it, she held onto the connection and forced him to show her.
Friday night, he felt her put on the ring. He was asleep, and it pulled him awake, he struggled to his phone but couldn't find it. He felt her suffocating, he wanted to stop it but couldn't find his damn phone. Finally, he pulled the hotel phone to his ear. SHIT. He didn't know her new phone number without looking at his cell. Think, think, think. It was a long shot, but he dialed the number of the phone he had given her the night before the Leviathan. It rang, and he could feel her growing weaker. Please, he begged and then the phone clicked on, "Lizzie, BREATHE!" He practically yelled it and waited. And waited.
"D-Dean?" He hung up.
Then it was today when they came to her address and found she wasn't home. He beat on her neighbor's door and when he answered, he happily identified Mrs. Elizabeth Winchester, 'A nice local teacher, too bad about her husband though. Died in the war.' His ears perked up when he had heard it. She had chosen his name, it excited him but filled him with dread. He knew what happened to Winchester women. She smiled through fogged over eyes as he let the memory consume her. His doubts, anxiety, and then seeing her sitting alone on the playground like some weird kid.
It had knocked the wind out of him, her short platinum blond hair was long and brown with soft wavy curls. Her brown eyes were muddy, and he didn't even need the bond to tell that she was hungover. He wanted to laugh, to tell her that he always told her drinking would bite her in the ass, but it wasn't his place anymore. That wasn't his Lizzie.
She frowned. She wanted to be, she could be again. He shook his head; he knew what happened to Winchester women. When they were together before, they had gotten too close, he lost his sense and let her in. He was selfish, and it wouldn't happen again, he was going to keep her safe.
That's when she saw it. He wasn't staying. He was planning on leaving her again. She cut off the connection and tore away from him. Anger filled her, and she almost raised a hand before a warning buzz went off in her head. Elizabeth screamed in frustration and stormed into her bedroom, leaving the door open for him to follow because fuck him if he wanted to leave, he could do whatever else he wanted, too.
"Lizzie, I can't. I can't let you get hurt."
"I was alone for TWO YEARS, Dean! I'm hurt! I'm dead inside, I come home from work and drink all night. I go to school and those kids keep me going but it's no kind of life. My life is with you, it's IN the life. It's how I was raised, it's all I know! There may have been a time that I wanted out, but then I went on the road with you and Sam and now I just can't see any other 'life' anymore."
"It doesn't have to be that way, though."
"YES, ACTUALLY. Now it does because of this stupid ring! I can't have a normal life tethered to you at all times! I can't move on! You know what this means!" Her thoughts sped back to the memory Dean gave her of him and Sam talking about the deal.
"It says here whoever is owned has to do anything the owner says." Sam read aloud.
"So, I just don't ever give her orders, that's fine!" Dean said excitedly, he could slip the ring on her finger and aside from the permanent art piece, she could move on. He thought of the guy with the coffee.
"Well, not exactly. It also says there's a bond between owner and possession. Like they can feel each other at all times; read each other's' minds." Dean gagged, that was a little intimate for his liking. He especially didn't want to feel her having sex with someone else, but if it kept her safe he would do it.
"It also says that possessions can't hurt their owners, just the thought of it punishes them."
Dean's ears perked, he growled, "What do you mean 'Punishes them'?"
"It'll shock them. Whenever they disobey, think about hurting their owner, adultery…"
"Adultery?"
"That's right, Dean. She'll never be able to have sex with anyone but you. Ever again." Sam sighed and pulled his arms behind his head. This whole thing was crazy, and it was stupid. But if Crowley was going to do this to her, Dean was definitely the better choice.
Dean relaxed, well that wasn't so bad.
"Dean!" Lizzie yelled at him through the memory, as if she had been there the whole time. He shrugged, reliving the scene with her. She threw herself down to sit on the edge of the bed. How many nights had she dreamed, prayed, begged to have him here in her room, and there he was; Flesh and blood. Her eyes traced his body. It was the same, but different.
His stance was guarded, his shoulders rigid and she wanted nothing more than for him to relax. To see the man she remembered, but this man had been through two hard years of life without her. His eyes wore new cracks; his skin was more worn. This wasn't the man she had loved. But she could love him, too.
"No." He warned, but she didn't listen. She was up against him and her lips pressed hard to his, tasting the man she never thought she'd feel again. His lips left whiskey and smoke on her tongue. She shuddered a moan, it was the same, he felt the same. "No, Lizzie."
"I'm no-" Before she could finish her sentence her body flung back from his, she didn't realize why at first. The apologetic look in his eyes spelled it out for her. She obeyed.
"Go to bed, Elizabeth. I'll come by and see you tomorrow." She wanted to cry out and tell him how wrong Elizabeth sounded coming out of his mouth, tell him she changed her mind. She was his Lizzie. But her body moved without her permission, she clumsily threw herself into the bed without protest. When she was snuggled under the covers, Dean spoke again as he flipped off the light and closed the door.
"Sweet dreams."
Her eyes shut and before she could do anything else, the darkness over took her. The dreams flooded in, her mom and dad, the few times they had from before her mother was possessed. The first-time John brought the boys to the house and how happy her dad had been to have them around. Then their first date. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet of all her favorite memories.
Dean sighed from the driver's seat of the Impala. He didn't know what to do next and he thanked his lucky stars that he could at least give her those good dreams. As they pulled out of her drive way and to the motel, they were silent. He pulled into a spot near his room and dragged his tired bones to bed. Finally closing his eyes, he focused on the live stream coming from Liz…Elizabeth's head. She was thinking of their first time in the back seat of the impala. He smiled and slowly drifted off himself, all his favorite moments playing like Cinemax in his mind.
