Dean woke with his heart pounding in his head. After a moment he was able to focus and found himself in a dark, boarded up room of an old house with Sam sitting across from him. This was totally normal, Sam sitting there, because he was dead. Azazel found him and killed him. He could only hope that he left Kayla and Alex out of it. Dean sat up and looked at him.

"Hey Dean." Sam sat calmly on the bed on the other side of the room. He chuckled quietly when he didn't get a response out of him. He was still processing. "I expected, I don't know, a hug? Holy water in the face, something." As per their usual traditions.

"So I'm dead?" His brother was laughing at him, he didn't think it was funny. Not even in an ironic way. "This is heaven, yellow eyes killed me?"

"Yellow eyes? Is that what you saw?" His tone turned serious, realizing how upset Dean was about the whole thing.

Dean tilted his head, confused and exhausted from whatever beat the hell out of him. "What do mean is that what I saw?"

"You were poisoned. So, forget about everything that you've been seeing. It's not real."

He thought about the scream from the hotel, the blood trail, the scratches on the pole outside the neighbor's house. Everything Azazel told him he did. It was all part of a bad trip? "So, are you real? Or…"

"I'm real." He touched his chest like that was going to prove it. Like if he would admit to being some sort of hallucination or demon. The disbelief must have been clear in his eyes and Sam sighed quietly. "Here, I'll save you the trouble." First he took a silver blade from his pocket and cut himself with hit. Then, he poured a little rock salt into a jug of holy water and took a deep swallow, nearly gagging, but he swallowed. "All me." He set the jug down. "And that's nasty."

Dean stood and looked at him, trying not to lose his mind. Oh wait, too late. "Sammy?"

He held his hands up. "Yeah, it's me."

He stepped forward cautiously, with everything that had happened in the last two days he wasn't overly trusting of his own judgment. Maybe he was missing something, something obvious because he wanted him back so badly. Maybe he didn't give a damn. He hugged his brother tightly and fought against a flood of tears. Before he could get too far into this guaranteed chick flick moment, he stepped back for an explanation. He kind of needed one. "Wait a minute. You were gone man, how the hell are you…"

"I don't know." He replied simply, they had yet to figure it out.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I have no idea, I'm just, back."

"Was it God? Or Cas? Does Cas know anything about it?" Surely Cas knew something, he had always heard something. He wondered why he didn't pop in the second it happened.

Sam shrugged. "I've been calling him, he doesn't answer any of my prayers. I don't even know where he is. I was down there, and the next minute, it was raining, and I was lying in that field. Alone. It's kind of hard to go looking for whatever saved you when you got no leads. Trust me, I looked. For weeks." He didn't get the same show Dean did; the light, the buildings shaking, the appearance of an angel. He got crap.

Dean was trying to add all this up in his head. Cas had to know he was out of hell, maybe there just hadn't been time to…did he say weeks? "Wait, weeks? How long have you been back?"

It was obviously a small detail he didn't want to share, but he also knew there wasn't going to be any avoiding of the topic at this point. It was now or, well, now. "About a year."

"About a year?" He shot at him, infuriated all of a sudden. That warm fuzzy feeling that embraced his return was gone. "You've been back practically this whole time? What did you lose the ability to send a freakin' text message?"

"You finally had what you wanted." He remained calm about the whole thing, like nothing was wrong. Like everything was just going to be fine.

"I wanted my brother, alive!"

"You wanted a family Dean. You have for a long time, maybe the whole time, I know you. You only have it up because of the way we lived. Now you've got Kayla, and the baby, I heard his name is Alex…that's great man. It's awesome. I didn't want to screw it up. I'm sorry, but after everything, you deserve some regular life."

He rubbed his mouth; he didn't know if he could even stay pissed off at him long enough to rationalize this. Sam had been alive nearly the whole time, alive and well. Through all the nightmares, all the anxiety, he had been safe. Was he supposed to be mad or relieved? "What have you been doing?"

"Hunting." He sat back down and gave him a look, what else was he supposed to be doing?

"You left me alone and you were flying solo?"

"Not solo," he shrugged. "I hooked up with some other people."

Dean couldn't believe any of this. It was a hell of a lot all at once. They missed an entire year out of each other's lives. "You, working with strangers?"

"More like, family. And they're here." He motioned to the door of the bedroom like it was some magical entryway that could answer all his questions. Sam led him out of the small back room and into the main area of the house. There seemed to be a small gathering and they were definitely hunters, judging by the arsenal. It seemed so strange, Sam hunting with all these people when it had just been the two of them for so long.

The woman closest to them turned and eyed him. "Hey."

"Hey." He replied awkwardly.

"My God you have delicate features for a hunter."

"Excuse me?"

"Dean," Sam interrupted before a pissing match could start. "Gwen Campbell."

She smiled, suddenly all open and inviting. "Glad to finally meet you. Sam's gone on and on."

Sam continued the round of introductions, pointing out the various members of his little posse. "This is Christian and Mark, Campbell."

Dean reached out to shake Christian's hand. "Campbell, like…"

"Like your mom."

Sam motioned back around the room again, reversing his order. "Third cousin, third cousin…something, twice removed. They grew up in the life, like us."

Well God damn. They weren't the only ones cursed with a shitty childhood chasing down ghosts and demons. "I thought all mom's relatives were gone. I mean I'm sorry, but, how come we didn't know about any of you?"

"Because they didn't know about you." Okay, this trip was really starting to get bad because he swore it was his grandfather Samuel that walked out. "Not until I brought you all together."

"Samuel." He stated, dumbfounded.

"Come here." He gave him a firm hug, why was everyone so fricken cheery about all of this? It didn't make any sense. "Guys, give me a second with my grandsons please." The rest of the hunters filed out, for the most part giving Dean a suspicious stare along the way. Samuel nodded to him. "A lot of resurrections in your face today, it's okay. Take a minute."

"It might take more than a minute. I mean, what the hell? How did this happen?"

"We're guessing that whatever pulled Sam up pulled me down, we just down know what that is, or why."

Dean stared at him. "And you have no leads, nothing? That's um…there's no more doornails coming out of that door is there?"

Sam shook his head. "As far as we know it's Samuel, and it's me." It probably did seem completely strange to him, even for Dean.

"Am I the only one who doesn't think this is all just fine?"

"Of course not." Samuel grimaced. "I wanted to come get you, Sam was adamant about leaving you out so we did. Until this."

Suddenly his mind was brought back into the present, into what was going on outside this little house of horrors. "And what is 'this'? How'd you end up at my place?"

"I got hit before you did," Sam explained. "A couple days ago, dosed up with poison by a couple of djinn."

"Djinn? I thought those were cave-dwelling hermit type. That's pretty exotic."

"These are different. They look like regular people, they blend in, and all they gotta do to kill you is touch you. Their toxins get in your system, all of a sudden you're hallucinating your worst nightmares and then you OD. Luckily Samuel had a cure."

This was a little much. He turned to his grandfather. "You got a cure for djinn poisoning?" He'd never even considered something like that.

"Well I know a few things." He smirked confidently. "Stick around and I'll show you a few tricks your daddy never even dreamed of."

Dean shook his head, trying to take all of this in. The lines between acid trip and reality were starting to look pretty damn thin. "So why are they after us?"

"Well you did stake one." Sam pointed out. "After they went after me, we figured you would be next." Apparently djinn held a grudge, heh, who knew right?

It wasn't random, son of a bitch he had hoped it was random. This thing was after revenge. Family for family. "You have to take me home."

"It's alright." Samuel said soothingly. "We already sent somebody over there to watch them."

He looked at his brother, not believing he let some random hunter, distant family or not, be in charge of protecting Kayla and the baby. What the hell was he thinking? "No." He spit out. "Right now." Crazy train was over.