This is the sixth story in my series.

Disclaimer: I do not own or have the rights to anything of the Supernatural universe. I am just playing in their sandbox.

The bed creaks and dips from the other side as the man next to her begins stirring, pulling her mind out of the deep sleep she'd been in. The mattress rises once the weight that had been on it is taken off and she listens while facing away to his feet dropping onto the carpeted floor and making their way across the room. After hearing the bathroom door click into place, she inhales deeply and then groans as she exhales, the headache making its presence well known as her brain tries to jumpstart. Good Lord, her skull is absolutely splitting open.

"Ow," she whispers to no one in particular as she rolls onto her back and presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. That must have been one hell of a night, she thinks to herself as she lays back. On top of the headache, her stomach is queasy and for the life of her she can't remember much past the first few drinks she had. A scene of some bar comes through the clouds, and walking sloppily down the strip while quite drunk, but other than the few, flashing bits and pieces, she comes up empty handed. God damn, they must have been bombed.

Sitting up, she looks around the room and is very surprised. This wasn't the same room the three of them checked into when they all arrived in Las Vegas two days ago. Their initial place was much shittier than this one; it was dirtier and smelled like smoke in every room. Taking in the details around her now, she recognizes that this new room has its own unique quirks and is totally ridiculous in every aspect. Everything is in shades of red, white and pink. The weathered wallpaper had tiny red hearts printed all over it and the bed was in the shape of a circle. She'd bet any amount of money that if she flicked the nearest switch on the wall that the mattress would rotate like a skanky carousel. Spying the red, heart-shaped hot tub in the corner that looked like it was straight out of the movie Dumb and Dumber, she scrunches her face in disgust. She definitely let him pick this place while hammered last night. Laughing at the thought briefly, she groans again when the exertion it makes her headache flare up.

Clearly they kept the party going once they got back here, she thinks. There are two empty bottles of champagne sitting by the still filled and now cold hot tub and there are clothes scattered all over the place. She knows they had a hell of a time once she spies her bra hanging from the lamp on the nightstand.

The sun is coming in through the small space where the heavy motel curtains don't quite meet but she has not a clue what time it is. Reaching to the bedside table with her left arm to check her phone for a time of day, she freezes halfway. There is a brand new piece of jewelry on her ring finger. Her heart skips a beat at the sight. How did that get there? Why is it there?

As the shock sets in she pulls her hand close to her face, studying the tacky gold band with laughable hearts etched into it. What did they do last night! Did they seriously get married! Holy shit! Did they just spur of the moment while completely shit-faced commit themselves to each other! For life!

Breathing deeply to calm herself after the initial shock hits, her heart rate begins to slow as she starts to think rationally about the whole situation. They knew this was where they were eventually headed, they'd even talked about it a few times before, so maybe it wasn't really so bad. Thinking clearly, she finds herself smiling. Wow, they did it. They actually took the plunge. It's a shame she doesn't remember it, but in the moment she doesn't care that much. She's filled with her all-consuming love for him and revels in the moment. Mrs. Winchester. Definitely sounds good and if she was being honest, she's wanted this for a while now.

Hearing the toilet flush from the other side of the closed bathroom door, she's excited for him to get back in the room and join her. She wants to celebrate this occasion and remember it this time. The door begins to open and her heart skips a beat.

"Mornin' hubby," she grins but quickly her smile drops into a pale, panicked expression. "Uh…" She sees him standing stock still in his boxer briefs in the doorway and finds that she can't breathe with the surprise of the sight of him.

Three Days Earlier

"Let's do good cop, bad cop," Lizzy grins mischievously at him from Bobby's living room, her voice quiet so that the tied down creature in the study can't hear what she says.

"What?" Dean asks turning to face her sharply with a surprised and annoyed expression.

"Louie and I used to do it all the time," she quickly explains, shrugging her shoulders as she doesn't understand why it's such a bad idea. They needed to interrogate the shapeshifter and Lizzy thinks they should have some fun with it. Their job had been pretty devoid of any amusement as of late so why the hell not get a little playful with it?

"What is this, a shitty 70's cop drama?" Dean asks in what would have been a loud voice had he not done his best to keep it down. It was more of a yell/whisper.

"No," she yell/whispers back at him with her hands planted on her hips. "But it works!"

"No fucking way! When has that ever worked?" Dean challenges, his quiet tone coated with disbelief.

"Every time Louie and I did it! It always worked for us!"

"No, L. That's lame." Dean stands his ground, not wanting to play this stupid game when there was information to be syphoned from the shapeshifter they got their hands on. "This isn't a fucking game. You know we should really get this done before they get back."

"C'mon, be my good cop!" Lizzy pouts, sticking out her bottom lip and holding onto his hands. It didn't work.

"No! And for your information you aren't cute when you do that," he informs her rudely, taking back his hands. "I hate that." Why she keeps trying that pouty shit, he'll never understand. It never once worked on him.

"Alright, fine. If you play good cop now, then I'll play bad cop later," she smiles out and winks, using his one true weakness against him. Dean stops for a moment while staring her down, hands on his hips, as he thinks. It wasn't the worst proposition he's ever been given…

"Yeah?" Dean questions. Lizzy smiles seductively, knowing she has him right where she wants him. Pushing up on her tip-toes, she brings her lips to his.

"Oh yeah," she mewls out before kissing him deeply, clearly conveying her promise to him. She backs away and looks up at him with hope.

"Fine," Dean gives in through gritted teeth. He hates when she wins and sadly, she wins a lot.

"Yes!" she cuts in, unable to contain her excitement.

"But if it doesn't work, we do it my way!" he warns her.

"Damn, you're pretty demanding for a good cop," Lizzy playfully scolds.

"That's because I'm the bad cop," he tells her with a stern face as he turns to walk into the study. "You're the good cop." He cuts off any chance she had of rebutting him.

"Fucking control freak," she mutters with a small, triumphant grin under her breath. She decides to stay away for a moment, walking outside and sitting on the front steps of the house while Dean starts in on their creature of the day. Tormenting anything for any reason always made Lizzy slightly uncomfortable so she avoids the show. That and she always worries too much when Dean returns, even if it's only very lightly, to any form of torture. With his time in hell being as it was, she has anxiety that it will pull him back there mentally, or shake loose a part of him that she hopes he's long left behind. It's a scary situation, but if he says he's ok and that he won't get carried away, she trusts him. Plus, she isn't even sure he'd be able to go back to what he once was. He's still broken inside about it, she knows it.

Looking out at the stars in the very clear sky, she's suddenly reminded of all the times she and Lou spent doing the same out in this very scrap car yard. She's been gone for a while now, Lizzy thinks. A long while. It's been odd without her, uncomfortable and Lizzy hasn't felt like herself in almost a year because of it.

Stopping her mind from delving too deep into despair, Lizzy stands and shakes the thought off. She has work to do.

Going back into the house, she walks into the study and surveys the room, Dean over by the desk looking over his weapons of choice and the exhausted shifter in the old wooden chair, head lolling to the side. This is when she turns on her good cop charms.

"Alright," Lizzy gently says while bringing a chair in front of the tied down shapeshifter and taking a seat facing it. She leans back and crosses her legs casually while taking in the split lip and swollen eye on the very familiar face the shifter decided to wear in the hopes of throwing the hunters off. "Let me start by saying I'm sorry about Dean. When in the presence of evil, he tends to get a bit… riled up sometimes."

"Gonna use some of those skills you picked up down under while on summer vacation on me?" Bobby's voice snarls to Dean as the shifter looks out from under his well-worn and well-known trucker hat. "Yeah, I'm quite aware of your past work. We monsters have interspecies talk every now and then."

"Then you know you should be much more scared of me. I can make you talk, I promise that," Dean warns in a low voice while never letting his eyes leave the large silver knife in his hand. He turns it, the light reflecting off of the shining metal as he does, and smiles.

"He's right," Lizzy says to the Bobby-a-like, acting sad to have to inform him. "So here's what I am thinking; you and I are both smart individuals, correct?"

Lizzy stares at the tied down shapeshifter from her seat directly across from it and waits, looking for a response while trying her best to not be even the least bit weirded out by the fact that the thing was a perfect copy of the man she considers a father. Instead the creature stays quiet, pushing Lizzy with his lack of communication, and she rolls her eyes.

"Looking for a two way street here, dude," she informs him. "I think we're both intelligent people. I know you want to tear me a new one, or maybe change into me because I'm by far the hottest chick you've ever seen, and you know I'd love nothing more than to end your sorry, pathetic, identity-stealing ass. Such is life, huh? So here's what I propose." She leans forward, elbows on her knees, looking at the Bobby-copy as she speaks. "You tell us what we want to know and we'll make this as painless and as quick as possible. You hold out, well, I leave the room and you're stuck with a really pissed of Winchester with an extensive catalogue of torture tricks."

Bobby's faux eyes travel back to Dean and the hunter winks and blows a kiss. The shapeshifter then looks back at Lizzy with conflict.

"Leaving it all up to you, chief," she adds. "I'm hoping you're in a cooperative mood."

"Depends on what you need to know," fake Bobby grits out through clenched teeth, clearly not wanting to spill anything but willing to do so in the face of Dean's wrath.

"Where?" Dean announces as he walks around the back of the wood chair the shapeshifter is tied to. He brings the knife to his captor's neck. "Where are they?"

"Where are who?" he feigns ignorance and Dean lightly drags the blade across its neck, slicing into his skin just a little as fair warning. The wound sizzles and burns as their adopted father's voice screams out with the pain.

"You should play along here," Lizzy very calmly suggests. "It'll only get so, so much worse if you hold back like that. We know there were at least two more of you in that town back there. Where are they?"

Sighing loudly, the shapeshifter looks to the floor. "I don't know."

"Bullshit!" Dean yells, pressing a palm to the evil creature's forehead and yanking it back. "Where are they!" The blade is pressed hard against his now exposed neck.

"No where you'll find them," he responds.

"Not until you tell us" Dean challenges, bringing the knife in his hand high before stabbing it straight through the shapeshifter's hand and into the wood of the chair's arm. "And you will."

Bobby's agony-filled voice fills the small room completely as the skin around the protruding knife bubbles and sears. Dean shoves the shifter's head forward and walks back around the front of the chair.

"No, I won't," the shapeshifter struggles out between pants.

"You know, suddenly I'm really tired," Lizzy over acts while standing and stretching. "I think I'm gonna leave you two alone for a while, take a nap or something." She fakes an exaggerated yawn and begins heading out of the study, Bobby's copy getting the message loud and clear.

"Wait!"

Lizzy stops and turns back to the shapeshifter with a smile at its plea.

"I wasn't joking when I said you won't find them, ok?" the creature tells her.

"Why not?" Dean sternly and quickly asks, another larger silver knife already in his fist.

"Because," Bobby's eyes lock menacingly onto Dean's. "They don't want you to."

Lizzy and Dean fight the urge to make eye contact with its threat. Instead they keep their eyes trained on the creature and wait for more information.

"Trust me," the shapeshifter warns. "You kill me, and they will punish you for it."

"Kinky," Dean brushes off while looking to Lizzy and hoisting his handgun out from his waist. "You said you put silver bullets in here, L?" It's more of issued warning than a needed reminder.

"Sure did, baby," Lizzy patronizingly responds with a wink.

Dean aims his gun at their captive's chest, right over its heart.

"Last chance," Dean cautions. "Where are the rest of your little toadies?"

"Fuck you," the fiery voice of the old hunter spits out to Dean.

"No," Dean says right before he fires three rapid shots, all passing through the monster's heart. Its head immediately slumps over and the room grows still. "Fuck you." Dean then looks over to Lizzy. "That bad cop enough for ya'?"

"It was pretty bad ass…" Lizzy admits with a slight wanting smile as she walks over to the motionless body, pulling the knife from its hand. She loved seeing Dean in control like that.

"Dean! I heard shots!" Sam loudly worries the second he has the house's side door open. He half runs through the rooms looking for the two hunters already inside and skids to a stop at the sight of a slumped over and motionless Bobby tied to a chair in the middle of the study. "Looks like we're a little late."

"Just a little," Dean confirms while untying the now lifeless shapeshifter from the chair.

"You find out where the rest are?" Sam hopes.

"Nah," Lizzy laments while wiping shifter blood off of the silver knives Dean had used with a dish rag. "He was a stubborn jackass."

"Huh," Sam says surprised.

"Huh what?" Dean asks, wondering what Sam's clearly already thought of.

"You guys ever heard of shapeshifters being protective of each other?"

"Nope," Bobby adds, coming into the room and joining the group. "Not in all my huntin' life."

"And that's a long ass time," Dean adds with a grin, a little dig on Bobby's age.

"Respect you're elders, idjit," Bobby says back in a tone that only the three younger hunters would know isn't serious. "Normally shifters are loners, each having their own agenda."

"This one was definitely trying to keep those others safe," Dean adds. "It'd rather die than let us know where they were."

"Fucking weird. Bright side, at least you put one of them down," Sam says. "And it's the one that we know was offing people left and right. Job well done if you ask me."

"Yeah, but he left us with a lovely parting threat," Lizzy says while dropping her work and turning to face the others in the room. "He kept saying that we'd regret killing him."

"That's comforting," Bobby sarcastically comments as he walks over to the shifter to take the old trucker hat off its head. He replaces it onto his own, sighing as he feels whole again. "Why'd he say that?"

"Not sure," Dean responds with a huff. "But he said that if we ganked his ass the missing others would come for us." Dean pauses for a moment while looking over to Sam and Bobby. "This is where I was hoping you two would tell us you caught up to them and took 'em down already."

"Found their lair in an old abandoned warehouse, goo and all, but they'd fled by the time we got there," Sam regrets informing them.

"Awesome," Lizzy caustically says.

"Aw, come on, L," Dean walks over and drops an arm around her shoulders. "I doubt they'll actually come for us. They aren't suicidal after all."

"Oh, no. Just vengeful," she returns.

"Hey, if they come around, I'll protect you."

"My fucking hero," she lamely says while she pushes him away. "Eh, I doubt they'll show up, honestly. Like Bobby said, shifters are usually loners."

Lizzy has been hunting with Sam and Dean much more often lately. She could feel the change in the air and with the much more dangerous version of daily life now in place and she wanted to help out as much as possible. Dean was against it at first, having gotten used to her staying home mostly and being safe, but her determination wasn't something he knew how to battle. That and she said didn't want to be away from him ever during these more troubling days and being without him felt wrong and way too terrifying. How could Dean possibly say no to that even if he tried?

"Alright, you know where the shovels are," Bobby says. "I think I have a tiny corner left on my property that isn't already holding the rotting corpse of a dead monster. Gonna run outta places real soon though." He lifts the lowered chin of the creature and studies his own face closely. "Kind of a looker, ain't he?"

"Damn near Brad Pitt level," Lizzy giggles.

The three younger hunters set to work, Lizzy running ahead to retrieve the shovels and Sam and Dean lifting and carrying the body outside. Bobby's FBI line begins ringing right on cue so he leaves the job the kids, as he refers to them all.

"How does he always just happen to get a call the second it's time to bury a body?" Dean's labored voice asks while he hauls the top half of the shifter by its arms.

"Sheer dumb luck, I'm guessing," Sam responds with a small laugh before adjusting his grip on the monster's legs. "I swear they get heavier every time."