He didn't intend to fall asleep, but he was going on hour seventy-two without and it had been the most stressful seventy-two hours he'd ever experienced. The job at the Nelson's, Sam's death, the horrific drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania, and the verbal sparring with Manny, it all cumulated into acute exhaustion. Before Dean realized what was happening he'd slumped sideways on the sofa in Manford's library and fallen blissfully unconscious.

The dream woke him. Sam was there, holding a knife to Dean's throat, his eyes narrowed with anger. With one quick stroke he slit Dean's jugular. Blood rushed from the wound, unstoppable. Sam stepped back with a sneer on his face.

"I told you not to do something stupid."

Dean sat up with a gasp. He immediately cringed backward as he opened his eyes and saw Deborah standing in front of him in the dark. The girl was just standing there, staring at him blankly. Her long tawny hair curled around her pale face, giving her a childlike look although she had to have been in her late twenties. She could, Dean realized, be older, depending on how long Manny'd had her since her initial death. Revenants aged, but very slowly.

They tended to do everything slowly, actually. Deborah's voice was a low, leisurely, drawl.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't want to wake you."

"No, that's...okay." Dean straightened. He eyed her carefully. If you didn't know, you couldn't tell unless you got right up on top of her and realized she wasn't breathing.

"Dr. Dubois sent me to tell you he would be just a little while longer."

"Oh, he's a doctor now is he?" Dean snorted. He glanced at his watch. It was three in the morning, over twelve hours since he'd arrived.

"Can I bring you anything?" Deborah asked politely. Her eyes blinked slowly.

Do they make a sanity pill? What was I thinking bringing Sam here?

"No," he rasped. "I'm fine."

"Okay."

She continued to stand there as if waiting for instruction. Dean scrubbed at his face with his hands but did not take his eyes off of her. There was a fine line between a vampire and a zombie, and an even finer line between a zombie and one of Manny's revenants. Sometimes those lines got blurred, which is why John came down on Manford so hard. If Deborah had a taste for human flesh, Dean had no intention of becoming a midnight snack. Of course knowing what Deborah ate was something he might have to know.

"Do you, uh...sleep?" he inquired cautiously. Considering the hour, it was a good segue for further questions.

"No."

"Eat?"

"Sometimes." Her smile returned. "I like pizza."

Thank God for that.

"I ate some in January," Deborah added.

Dean raised his brows. January was five months earlier. "Anything since?"

"No. That was good. I may be hungry next month." Her thin shoulders rolled in a shrug. "Are you hungry?"

"No," Dean lied. In fact he was starving, but the thought of having Deborah make him a sandwich was not particularly appealing. He studied her carefully once more. She really was a stunning piece of work, and to think Manny had produced something even more life-like after her was astounding.

She cocked her head at him. "I know what you want to ask."

"You do?"

"Oh yes. People who meet me always ask. At least those that know what I am."

"So you know?" Dean let out a breath. Sometimes revenants didn't realize they were dead, and he rather hoped Sam wouldn't. Her reply eased his worries somewhat.

"Doctor Dubois told me. After he raised Duncan I was curious, so I asked. Duncan turned out nicer." She inhaled deeply. Breathing was necessary for speaking. "I drowned."

"You remember any of it?"

"Not much. I remember the water and being cold. I don't like water." Abruptly she cocked her head to the side as if listening. She even nodded in response to some unheard question before turning her attention back to Dean. "The doctor asks me to take you upstairs. Your brother is in the blue room."

Deborah turned on her heel. Dean scrambled up out of the sofa to follow her. Her pace was slow and steady, with only a slight stiffness to her back and shoulders. It was easy for him to keep up with her because of this, and the fact that she was half his height. At the stairs he surpassed her, climbing them two at a time in his haste. Manny was standing at the end of a long hallway, in front of a closed door. He appeared slightly disgruntled.

"Well, he's a Winchester all right. Definitely your father's son." He failed to elaborate, but went on to tell Dean the procedure had been successful. "Frankly, I'm surprised it worked at all given the length of time he'd been dead." There was a frown. "It worked extraordinarily well in fact."

"So he's..."

Manny waved a hand at the door. "See for yourself."

Dean hesitated. His hand shook a little as he turned the knob. With a deep breath, he turned it, popping the door open with a creak.

"Go on," Manny sniffed. "Oh, and Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"About our negotiations - forget about anything else. Just take your brother and go, and keep your Dad out of my business. The less Winchester I see in the next twenty years the better." He gestured to Deborah, and the two of them descended the stairs, leaving Dean standing in front of the door.

He stared at it for a moment, chewing his lip in apprehension.

Here goes nothing.

Dean pushed the door open just wide enough to admit himself, and once inside, closed it firmly.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but he braced himself as he turned around to face the bed. His voice was a cracked whisper.

"Sammy?"

Sam was sitting up against a thick pile of pillows, covered in a quilt and plain white cotton sheets as if he were just a house guest. His arms were crossed over his bare chest. Thick, white bandaging encircled his neck like a collar, hiding the ugly wound that had killed him. Other than the paleness of his skin and the dark circles under his eyes, he looked completely normal. He also looked bored, impatient...

And more than a little pissed off.

"Manford Dubois?" he grated. "You brought me to Dr. Frankenstein?"

"Sam," Dean choked on his emotions. They ran the gambit from sheer joy that Sam was alive again, to annoyance at the pissy attitude. He wasn't quite sure what to feel, nor how, exactly to express it. The latter was nothing new. "What was I supposed to do?"

"How about burial or cremation?" Sam said tartly.

"Oh, come on, Sam! How could I just let you die? You never gave up on me!"

"Dean. There's a difference between dead and dying. You still had a pulse!"

Dean fumed. "You ungrateful bastard."

"I should be grateful for what exactly? Huh?" Sam shot back. There was nothing at all slow about him. He was as sharp as a tack and struck like a cobra. Manny had definitely improved his technique since Deborah. "You've turned me into one of them, Dean, the things we hunt down and destroy. What the fuck were you thinking?"

There was no way Dean was going to tell him what he was thinking, primarily because now he was pissed that Sam was pissed. He didn't want to admit how much it hurt to have Sam gone, how badly he'd wanted to make things right. Dean had agonized over the decision for hours and in the end, he'd been forced to admit that he just couldn't let his brother go yet. The loss had been too sudden. Dean couldn't accept it.

"You said it yourself," Sam continued, not letting him off the hook. "People can't play God. There are always consequences."

"Fine," Dean snarled. "Then why don't I just go down to the car, get a gun, and put a bullet in your head? That should ease your conscience."

There was an abrupt silence. Sam's eyes glazed and he grew frighteningly still. For one horrifying moment, he looked dead, so much so that Dean nearly called Manny back in to accuse him of lying. When Sam finally spoke his voice was flat and uninflected, much like Deborah's.

"No," he said slowly. "Because now I know why there are spirits in the world, why they don't pass over as they should." His head cocked slightly to the side, as if he were listening. "There's nothing out there, Dean, nothing. There are no bright lights and lost relatives, no chorus of angels to greet you, no Heaven, no Hell. The afterlife is a myth. Everything just - stops."

Their eyes met, and Dean felt a chill as he saw something deep within Sam's that had not been there before, something dark and dangerous. Sam's words made him shudder, not for what they said, but the tone he used to dispatch them. It was very close to a warning.

"I will never," Sam said icily. "Ever, go back there."

"Well, then," Dean said, with a lightness he definitely did not feel. "Stop your bitching, because you owe me one, even if it's just for making me have to suck up to Manny."

Sam blinked, and then smiled, and whatever Dean thought he'd seen was gone.

"Man, I would have loved to have seen that."

"Shut up."

"They all come out a little differently," Manford had said. "Which is why I need to do more research. I have the technique down now, but not the fine control needed to produce consistent results."

"Oh that's just peachy, Manny. Real comforting."

"Just let me know what happens, for the sake of science."

"And necromancy?"

"That too."

"And if he kills me?"

"I have more serum."

"In your dreams Dubois. I'll rot first."

So far, so good. A day later and Sam hadn't done anything really extremely out of the ordinary. At the moment he was reading a road map, scowling down at it as he tried to figure out where exactly they'd made a wrong turn onto a stretch of very desolate highway. Dean was freezing because Sam had the window rolled down. Sam didn't seem to notice the cold, but he had noticed the unpleasant smell of the Impala's interior.

"What reeks?"

"That, my brother, is the smell of your two-day-old corpse."

"Oh God, that's just gross, Dean."

"You have no one to blame but yourself, Sammy."

"Very funny."

"I think it was when we went left at the last crossroads. We should have jogged right a little instead," Sam murmured. He traced their route with his finger. "Yeah, that's it."

"Can we get there from here? Or do we have to backtrack?"

"Hmm, no. Keep going straight. We'll pick up Route 219, and that should take us back around to the north again."

Dean nodded. They were weaving their way back toward Michigan. Regardless of their personal feelings regarding the situation, the werewolf still had to be hunted down and killed. If it weren't for the danger it posed to other people, particularly the Nelsons, Dean might have been tempted never to go back there again. He knew he couldn't do that; the bastard had to be destroyed. Sam definitely shared that sentiment.

They'd been making excellent time. Sam, as it turned out, didn't sleep. While Dean nodded off in the passengers seat, Sam continued driving through day and night, only stopping to fill up the car with gas.

Before he'd drifted off to sleep, Dean had watched his brother drive for a while, taking note of something he found particularly eerie. Sam not only sat still as he drove, he sat perfectly still. In the half hour or so of Dean's observation, he hadn't moved at all; hadn't coughed, scratched, or even shifted his weight. His hands never left the steering wheel, and his eyes never left the road. The silence had been absolute. He hadn't even sighed. It was then Dean noticed that like Deborah, Sam only breathed when he spoke.

"Sam?"

"Hmm?"

"You're turning me into a popsicle."

"Oh, sorry." Sam reached over and rolled up the window. The car warmed up almost immediately. It still smelled, but not nearly as bad as it had the day before. "It's a little better."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "I'll have her detailed after we finish this up and that should get rid of it. We'll stay the night in Ann Arbor. I need to sleep in a bed tonight anyway."

They drove without speaking for a while. Dean didn't turn on the stereo, although he was tempted. Sam's unusually silent presence made him uneasy. It was almost as if he were alone in the car and reminded him uncomfortably of the horrific two days he'd spent driving with Sam's body lying in the back seat.

When his brother did inhale a breath, Dean was startled by the sudden sound.

"You never did tell me why you did it," Sam said.

"Did what?"

"Took me to Dubois."

"It's not obvious?"

"It would be kind of nice to hear you say it."

"Say what, that having you dead sucked ass?" Dean glanced over at him quickly, scowling.

Sam grinned back. "Well that's a start."

"God, you haven't changed."

"You'd rather I had?"

Dean glanced over at him again. The smile had vanished. In fact, every trace of animation had vanished. The look Sam was giving him was frighteningly cold.

"Nuh...no," he stammered. "That's not what I meant. I mean all this 'get in touch with your emotions' pansy ass crap. Figured getting you away from Stanford would cure that."

"Oh." Sam's expression flickered back on, but it remained rather grim. "Are you having regrets?" he asked softly.

Dean heard the ominous undercurrent in Sam's voice, and felt his piercing gaze. "No, Sammy. I'm not," he replied.

There was a rustling sound. Chancing a look, Dean saw his brother return to his study of the road map. There was no malice in his voice but what he said made Dean shiver.

"I know when you're lying."

"Why would I lie, Sam? I didn't exactly do the wave when you died in my arms."

Sam quietly folded the map. "There is that whole playing God issue. Who are we to meddle in who lives and who dies?"

"Technically you're still dead," Dean murmured. "So there's a sticking point."

"And of course, I'm not carrying around the burden of having lived while someone died in my place. I'm sure that was part of your rationalization for taking me to Dubois."

Dean ground his teeth. "Maybe it was, what's your point?"

"You talk a good talk, Dean, but you're not really a tough guy, are you? You're wondering what kind of monster you created, and what kind of scar it's going to leave on your soul."

The Impala's tires screeched on the roadway as Dean slammed on the brakes and pulled over. His hands clenched the steering while in a white knuckled grip as he turned to meet Sam's gaze head on. "Did I?" he demanded.

Sam's mouth quirked into a wry smile. "Did you what?"

"Create a monster."

For a moment Dean had his answer, and it was not the one he wanted. The monster was there in the cold glitter of Sam's eyes, and the shuttered look to his expression. He was cold, dead, unfeeling and very, very dangerous. Had Dean been carrying a gun he might have shot him right there and then.

But the moment passed in a blink of an eye, making Dean wonder, once again, if he had seen anything at all. Sam's smile broadened. The monster was vanquished by bright, twinkling eyes and dimpled cheeks. With a shake of his head, Sam laughed.

"Dude, chill. I'm just giving you a hard time."

Dean's shoulders relaxed. The road beckoned, and he eased the car back onto the highway, gradually picking up speed. "Maybe not a monster, but definitely an asshole."

"Do you blame me? 'Walking dead' does not look good on a resume."

"Okay, so I'm a selfish bastard. I wasn't ready to make this a solo gig."

Sam chuckled. "He likes me, he really, really likes me."

"Shut up, Sally and look for the turn off."