Drusilla. Cordelia barely suppressed a groan. That psycho just had to haul her bony undead ass back to California. She was probably torturing Angel as they spoke, or making him play tea party. Or both. She could've followed Sam home to snack on his friends, but if that were the case, Cordelia guessed they'd be equally screwed no matter they did.

Sam told the whole story quickly enough. He had run across Drusilla after tracking a couple of disappearances. She talked crazy, they fought, and his memory got a little blurry thanks to his blackout. The moment he woke up, every shitty thing he'd done in the past year flooded through his head, and his small heart grew three sizes or whatever. Cordelia listened to it all, anguished pauses included, but she couldn't stop wondering what it meant for Angel. One of those people had gone missing, Sam said, days before Angel did. That didn't exactly rule out Angelus getting free, but it made it pretty clear that he hadn't called Drusilla to town after the bloodbath started. She had come for him first.

"I don't know why she didn't kill me," Sam said.

Cordelia tried to give him a reassuring smile. "Maybe she's just not into reheated food."

Dean walked to the window and glanced out over the motel lot. "He's bullshitting. Knew I was onto him, so he made this up to keep me from dealing with the problem." He'd repeated that a few times already. He had to be trying to convince himself, keep from hoping for too much.

"Not necessarily. I—I've come across that name in my research. Drusilla," Wesley said. As his lies went, it sounded marginally plausible. "One of Angelus's bloodline. She traveled with him, before he was cursed. And the detail about the dolls, well, that's quite accurate."

"Family reunion, huh?" Dean faced them again. "All right. Maybe he met this Drusilla. Sure doesn't sound like a real name to me, but I've got an open mind. That doesn't prove a thing about him," he pointed at his brother, "being any less of a monster now than when he fed me to the goddamn wolves." His voice turned uneven as he talked. So much hurt and anger in it that it shocked her.

The hunter was hanging by a thread. She hadn't realized just how bad it was.

"Hey," she said, "I get it. Right now we have a story, nothing else. But we're going to get to the bottom of this."

Dean sat down on one of the beds and dropped his head into his hands. "Whatever you say, kid."

Wesley looked about ready to join the angst circle. She kicked his foot. "Do something," she whispered.

"Right." He gingerly sat on the other bed, closer to the desk, and pulled out his notepad. "Sam, other than the, ah, emotional aspect, what changes did you notice? After your resurrection, and tonight."

"Since I got back from," Sam said, and paused, "from Hell, I haven't slept. Ever. I don't know if that's different now. Getting knocked out isn't exactly the same thing."

That made Dean look up. "You don't sleep?"

"I've been pretending."

"Shit," he said. It did sound pretty creepy, especially if they'd been sharing motel rooms the whole time. Which, to be honest, was a little weird in itself.

Wesley frowned and made a note. "But you haven't noticed any other physical changes?"

"I guess not."

"Well, that's unusual," he said, brilliant scholar of magic and mystical forces that he was. "I know this might be sensitive territory, but I'm afraid you'll have to tell us more about your time in Hell."

"He doesn't remember," Dean said.

"I do now." Sam stared down at his hands. "It came back to me tonight."

Cordelia winced. Now on top of everything else, they'd have to deal with Hellboy's PTSD. Not exactly her specialty. Back when she and Xander were dating and he used to freak out about almost dying, and seeing people die, and so on, she'd just tell him to call her back after he pulled himself together. And it had to be worse being Satan's roommate than Buffy's token loser friend.

Dean snorted. "Right. And you haven't said anything about it until this minute."

"Because if you were in my shoes, you'd tell all about it right away," Sam said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "Dean. I'm not lying. I just don't know how to prove it to you." He shifted in the chair, and his chains clinked. "I didn't mention the memories because I'm still working through them. I can't even guess how much time I spent down there. It feels kind of, I don't know, distant, for all the sense that makes." He shot an uncertain glance at Wesley and Cordelia. "Does it make any sense to you guys?"

"It very well might," Wesley said, closing his notepad, "but I need more information. From sources other than you."

Time to make their exit, apparently. Let the brothers sort out their own traumas. "Research," she supplied.

Wesley nodded. "Yes. Exactly. Research."

"Hitting the books."

"We'll be in touch."

"In the meantime, don't kill each other," she said. "Get some sleep. As long as that's, like, physically possible. You guys look really rough."

. . .

Dean watched the door close behind Cordelia and Wesley. The silence in their wake felt suffocating. Until he knew the truth for sure, he couldn't talk with Sam about Hell. It might be the ultimate mind game, forcing him to relive his own stint there. Just the last couple minutes had sent his pulse into overdrive. He took a few long breaths and tried to force the flashes of pain and guilt out of his mind. That was all in the past. They had enough problems in the here and now without dredging it up.

"How much you want to bet we won't be seeing Velma and Daphne again?" he said, once he thought his voice wouldn't give him away.

Sam shrugged. "They seemed nice, and they chained me up really well."

"Yeah, that was kinda weird." Dean took out his phone. "Bobby's probably thinking we killed each other."

"Maybe you should check up on Kate, too."

"Kate?"

"The detective. Kate Lockley."

"Didn't realize you two were on a first name basis."

"She could be in danger," Sam said. His concern sounded real enough. "She's tracking this thing down, and she's going in blind."

Dean had been worrying about her himself, until this Sam business crowded everything else out. Whatever she knew, or thought she did, she couldn't take on vamps like Angelus and his brood alone. But with any luck, she'd be calling it a night soon and going back to the relative safety of her home. She seemed too smart and paranoid to invite a vampire inside. "I don't exactly have her number," he said. "So I phone the station, and then what, tell them Detective Lockley should watch out for crazy Victorian chicks? Besides, she thinks I'm a lawyer. Anything I say, she'll probably do the opposite."

"A lawyer?" A confused wrinkle crossed Sam's forehead. "There still has to be something you can do."

He was falling way too easily into their old way of talking. "It's a bit soon for you to be playing the angel on my shoulder, don't you think?" he said. "You called me, I'm here, and I'm going to bed. Like the girl said, try not to kill me." The words came out all wrong. Tired, strained. He pulled up Bobby's number, and his thumb hovered over the dial button. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"On the off chance you're really you, welcome back."

. . .

Cordelia waited until they entered the stairwell to start talking. In a place like this, the Dysfunction Brothers could probably hear everything that happened on their floor. "Okay, what's with the fleeing? Pretty sure we could've wrung a whole lot more out of the guy."

"I have a theory already," Wesley said. "A minute more in that room, and I would've felt obliged to share it."

"Sharing is caring, Wes."

"Not before we've considered the implications."

She had a theory of her own. Sam's tortured monologue had seemed awfully familiar. In particular, the sudden, overwhelming wave of guilt. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Most likely." They reached the bottom of the stairs, and he held open the door for her. "But we're biased. We need to come up with alternative explanations."

Alternatives, alternatives. Now that she wasn't focused on smuggling in a bunch of dungeon tools, she could really appreciate the grossness of the lobby. They passed a bowl of bruised apples and overripe bananas on their way out. She shrugged. "Well, they're down with the Jesusy stuff, right? Maybe he ate some fruit."

"What?"

"You know, magic fruit, teaches you the difference between good and evil."

"Adam and Eve weren't sociopaths."

"Weren't they, though? Clinically speaking?"

They walked out to the car. No vampires or demons attacked. Score one for the team. Cordelia slid into the driver's seat, and Wesley buckled up next to her.

"That poor, lucky bastard," he said with a sigh. "He got his soul back."

"Yeah. He definitely did."