"Spirits?" he echoes, and it probably says a lot about him that he can still sound vaguely incredulous while standing on a planet thousands of years in his own past, on furlough from purgatory, telling Dean about his religious visions. "It's nothing like that. I don't... think it is," he adds suddenly, in a tone of consideration. "I mean, I don't believe in the gods, you know I don't, but..."

But he has to admit, just not out loud, that he was never able to come up with a better explanation. Not when the evidence started to become pretty frakking overwhelming. "I don't know what I was looking for," he says suddenly, firmly. "I think it was just about Earth. Coming here, I mean. The rest..." He sighs. "We already know what the rest of it meant." Keep the home fires burning.