Filling Gi in on the story turned out to be a confusing process. Dean, of course, tried to hedge at first, providing the censored "for civilians" version, confused memories, flashbacks, unexplained wounds.

"Bro, it's late," Gi interrupted the sketchy, carefully worded account, "Can we cut to the part where you make up your mind? You keep showing up, uninvited, by the way, looking for help, and when I try to help you shut down. Just be straight with me."

Deans sighed, "Man, I don't even know where to start without telling you my whole life story, and honestly, you'd be on the phone to the happy home before I got to being old enough to shave."

"Why don't you start with whatever made it seem like a good idea to break into my place and wake me up to show me your VanHelsing impersonation?" Gi suggested.

Dean flushed a little, "Um, yeah, sorry about that, I thought you might be a trickster."

It was hard to tell with Gi, but he looked like he might actually be a little offended. "My man, I am straight up." he said. "I could do a better business if I did do all that cold reading, card counting, special effects crap, but that's not who I am. I don't need to…I'm trying to keep my karma in mind."

"Yeah, well," Dean tried to slip something in, but Gi wasn't finished.

"You know, if this is the way you respond to thinking you've been jacked for twenty bucks, you might have bigger problems than I can help you with." he observed.

"You're probably not wrong." Dean admitted.

"So work with me, Dude. Help me out here. What happened that made it start going wrong for you?"

"I died." Dean laid it on the line. Either Gi would freak and they'd be done, or they'd make progress figuring it out. Either was preferable to remaining stalled out.

"Oh cool," Gi said, instantly enthused, "you mean like a near death experience, long tunnel, bright light, your dead grandma yelling 'over here, honey'? Man, I always wanted one of those."

Dean didn't share Gi's elation, "No, not near death, actual real death death, no light, no tunnel, lights out, six feet under, feeding the worms, death."

"I gotta say, Bro, for a guy that was that dead, you look pretty alive." Gi said skeptically.

"Yeah, thanks for that." Dean grumbled. "You think I don't know that? You think I don't know how crazy this all sounds?"

"I'm trying to be open minded, but yeah, I guess I kinda gotta consider that maybe you don't." Gi confessed.

Dean couldn't blame the poor guy. He was right. It did sound crazy. It even sounded crazy to him, and with his life experience, he could take an awful lot of crazy in stride. The fact that he was so messed up was a pretty good indicator of just how code red insane this whole thing was. "Right, ok, how about we go with, I remember it having happened." he offered. "Can you deal with that one?"

"I can do that." Gi nodded. "So, how'd you bite it?"

"Hell hound tore me to shreds."

"Dude," Gi started.

Dean raised a hand, "I know, I don't look it. That's the last thing I remember. Then I woke up, in a box, planted like a daisy." Dean shuddered at the memory of what had come next. As infuriating as the endless onslaught of questions with no answers had been, it at least had provided an effective distraction. He hadn't thought much about the hole in Pontiac that he had dug from the bottom up since he'd staggered away from it, guided by the beacon of a hazy memory. He sure didn't like revisiting it now.

Gi looked at him curiously, "What's the part you're not telling me?"

Deans shuddered again. The one memory he had of Hell wasn't a pretty one. Massively cringe worthy would be a better descriptor. He could still feel the heat, the metal biting into his body, pulled deeper by his own weight, as he'd hung suspended over he didn't know what, the smell of sulfur and the sound of anguished, inhuman cries swirling around him.

"Hell," he said haltingly, "I went to Hell, might still be there. This is just the sort of sadistic mind screw that a demon would pull."

"Dude," Gi tried to reassure him, "this isn't Hell. I would know if this was Hell."

"That'd be real comforting, if it weren't exactly what a demon would say." Dean observed.

"Ok then, I know this isn't Hell, but I get it. You don't know who to trust. You can't even trust yourself, but Dude, at some point, you're going to have to pick a direction and go with it. Let's just start with what you remember, and then we'll figure out how to deal with the crazy parts."

"I don't know what I remember." Dean said, frustrated. "I mean, I remember stuff, but it's like it never happened. Things are different. The world is different." Finding the words to explain to someone that wasn't actually living it was next to impossible.

"Dude, that's messed up."

"I'm not arguing, but hey, messed up is kind of what I do, so I try to sort things out, but they don't want to be sorted out. Like, I try calling people, but nobody ever picks up. No, not even that, the numbers are never in service."

"Sam," Gi said, starting to put the pieces together.

Hearing the name stung a little. The hurt flickered across Dean's expression for an instant before he beat it down and got his game face back on. "Yeah, Sam," he confirmed.

"Who is he?"

"My brother," Dean moved on quickly, not ready to go down that emotional rabbit hole with a guy he just met. "And the phone calls aren't the half of it. I did some poking online. No, you know what? It's easier to just show you." He looked around the small, shabby room. "Dumb question I know, but have you got a computer, a cell phone, anything with a net connection?"

Gi looked mildly insulted, "Dude, what do you think?"

"Yeah, I know, like I said, dumb question."

Gi didn't appear to be listening as he dug under the sofa and fished out a shiny rectangle.

Dean didn't have a lot of technical expertise, but he didn't need it to know that this was a piece of equipment that came with some serious bragging rights attached. It couldn't have looked any more out of place in a run down studio apartment filled with makeshift furniture.

"I, uh, got a guy." Gi offered by way of explanation.

That Dean understood, "Oh yeah, I get that. I've had a few guys myself." Gi threw him an odd look which made him review his words. He opened his mouth to clarify, but thought better of it, "You know what, no." he said with a head shake. "Let me just show you this."