"Do you mind if I look at the pictures on your phone while you are in the shower?" Lisa asked when Dean got back into the car after renting them a room.

Dean nodded. The visit to his grave had reminded him too much of Sam's grave, and he felt like someone had a vice grip on his chest, his throat, his vocal chords, on every single part of his body making it difficult to speak, difficult to breathe, difficult to think. Never before had it been difficult to reserve a motel room, never had he had to think about how many beds, but tonight—tonight it had been near impossible to spit out that he only wanted a room with a single queen bed.

And asking for one single bed, in a no name motel on a back road in a backwoods state was something he hadn't done in over five years, and if truth be told he had hoped to never do it again. If it had been up to him to begin with they would have stayed somewhere classier. Some recognizable commercial chain that charged a reasonable fee and had a continental breakfast, something that didn't immerse him in his old life, a life that reminded him of his brother, a life that was strange to him now, a life that he missed, a life that he wished still included his floppy haired, hazel eyed, ginormous brother. But Lisa insisted that they stay somewhere that he and Sam would have stayed. She wanted to be introduced to his life in every way possible.

"Dean?" Lisa asked softly. He hadn't started the car, he was simply staring out of the windshield, his face slack and sad. "Dean?" she asked again, and he slowly turned and faced her, blinked slowly once, and licked his lips.

"Yeah?"

"Where's our room?" she asked gently.

"214." He responded.

"Where is it around here?" she gestured to the complex. He shook himself and realized what she was asking. He smiled, but the glassiness in his eyes didn't abate.

"Sorry." He turned the car on and drove to the room, parked, handed her the key, grabbed their bags, and followed her to the door. She opened it and her shock was audible.

"My good god." Lisa exclaimed. It was gaudy, it was loud, it was 70s themed, and on the Winchester weird motel room meter it only rated about a five. "This is hideous." She said with an amazed giggle.

"This one actually isn't as bad as some." He said slowly. "We stayed in one that looked like a dungeon . That one was bad."

"Dungeon?"

"Don't ask. We were tired, we were in pain, Sam was bleeding, and we needed to just be somewhere where I could get him on a bed and assess the damage, we didn't even notice the décor until two days later when we both were on the mend and had sleep." Dean moved from her side, dropped their bags next to the door and took off his jacket and put it on the chair in front of the desk.

"You stayed in places like this your whole life?"

He shrugged. "Not all of the motels were as nice as this one. Some you could hear the roaches' legs clicking against the floor when you turned off the light, some you shared the bed with the roaches. So, I guess, this one could be considered one of the nice ones."

"Your dad….he let you guys stay in places like this?"

"Let? 'Let' wasn't in the equation. Sometimes it was all we could afford, sometimes it was a matter of discretion, places like this don't ask questions, they don't ask why a grown man is on the run with two children in tow, they don't ask where the credit card came from, they don't check ID, they just accept whatever payment that is handed and turn the other way." Dean licked his lips and looked at the room again. "Once, Sam and I stayed in one of these places that was abandoned. The water still ran, but the toilet didn't work, and it was winter, and there wasn't heat. We made do with a fire and a makeshift outhouse." He sighed. "But when you are fugitives, when you are the prey of things you don't know what, and you just need to be under the radar, you do things that just aren't normal. You stay places that most people look at as disgusting, because you don't' have a choice."

Lisa looked at Dean with new eyes. He was tall, strong, handsome, and smart, but he was also a survivor. Not just a survivor of the apocalypse, something that he had shared very little about with her, but he was a survivor of his childhood, he was a survivor of loneliness, survivor of fear, survivor of a life that killed most.

"You mind if I get a shower first?" he asked disrupting her thoughts.

"No. Go ahead." She touched his shoulder, he picked up her hand and kissed it and grabbed his bag and took off for the bathroom. The door clicked softly behind him. She sat down on the bed, bounced a couple of times to assess it's softness, and one satisfied she pulled her legs in and sat cross-legged on the bed and pulled the phones from the Impala's glove box out of her hoodie pocket and began the examination.

She discarded the first silver phone because it didn't have photo taking feature, and then she looked at the other two phones. One black, one silver. Which one was the one Dean said was his and which one had he said was Sam's? She sighed and put the black one aside and turned on the silver phone. It took a moment but she found the photos. She started at the beginning and found pictures of a tall girl, blonde ringlets hanging past her shoulders. There were several pictures of her, and then she disappeared, and there were a couple of Dean, one under the Impala, one of him giving the phone the finger. She laughed at that one, and then the next one made her stop abruptly. It was Dean, chest open and gaping, blood pouring from his body. She dropped the phone and her hands covered her mouth, trying to keep the scream on the inside.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image seemed seared on the inside of her eyelids. All she could see was Dean's lifeless face, Dean's blood on the outside, Dean's intestines on the outside. Dean's dead eyes. Dean Dead. Tears were rolling down her face, she couldn't pull her hands from her mouth. She couldn't move. The picture was horrific, it was terrifying, it was devastating.

A hand touched her shoulder and she startled. "Lis…it's me." Dean said softly. She felt his weight on the bed beside her and she leaned over and buried her face into his shirt. Her hands left her mouth long enough to cling to his tee shirt. His strong arms wrapped themselves around her and he rocked her and made soothing noises, trying to abate her tears.

"How…how….?" She sobbed into his shirt.

"Sam took that picture. I found it on his phone not too long ago actually. I started a big fight. I couldn't believe that he would keep something so grotesque, something so horrible. He just let me scream and holler at him. He didn't move. He just endured my ranting and raving. Then when I screamed myself out, and demanded that he give me a response, when I finally allowed him to give a response, he said, 'It reminds me of what I can never allow to happen again. It reminded me while you were gone, why I was willing to follow Ruby, why I was practicing with her, why I was drinking her blood, why breaking your trust was worth it, why the addiction, why the withdraw, why all of the bad crap was worth it. When I forget I just look at that picture, and I don't doubt for a second why I did any of it.'" Lisa looked up at Dean's face, tears streaking her mascara down her lovely face, swollen brown eyes, and puffy cheeks never looked so beautiful.

Dean pushed hair from her face. "I never thought it was worth it. If I hadn't sold my soul, the apocalypse wouldn't have happened, and Sam would have been in heaven happy and at peace. But I was selfish and I couldn't stand to be in a world without him. But," he shrugged. "That's where I am now. Now not only am I in a world where my brother is dead, but his soul is damned to hell. He is stuck in a cage with Lucifer for eternity. And it is all because I was weak."

Lisa's eyes softened. She reached up and touched his rough cheek. "Dean…."

"There is nothing you can say to make it better." And she knew he was right. So, she did the only thing that she knew to do, she covered his mouth with hers and kissed him with all of her might, her love, and her sadness. His arms around her tightened in a hug.

"I miss him." He whispered.

"I wish I had known him." She said. She wished for the one introduction that this weekend would not afford-the introduction of Sam Winchester: genius, brother, friend, son, and hero.