"We need to find the Doctor."

At Dean's words, Sam looked up from his laptop. "You think so?"

Dean absentmindedly loaded and unloaded the bullets in his handgun. "I don't know what's going on at that end. Maybe Lucifer's already got Donna, we don't know."

"We probably don't want to know." Sam turned his attention back to his laptop. "I mean, if Lucifer's here, then he's going to be gunning for you, Michael's vessel. And we don't want to put ourselves in unnecessary danger."

Dean shifted in his seat a little bit, before saying, "No, we really should find the Doctor. If there's a time to make a stand, then it's probably whenever Lucifer's just getting used to his vessel and is weak."

Sam sighed. "I guess that makes sense." He shut his laptop and stretched. "I suppose Michael's only going to get more and more persuasive with you anyway. I mean, not saying you cave easy or anything, but an archangel's probably got a few tricks up his sleeve to get what he wants."

Dean shivered as he thought of the dreams Michael was sending him, and exactly how persuasive Michael was. But the thought of how powerful he and Michael would be together didn't compare to the thought of destroying the world. Not yet, anyway.

Dean would like to say he had gotten used to people appearing out of nowhere at that point, but he'd have been lying. Two people just materialized into the motel room; one was obviously Cas, as could be seen by the trench coat, but the other was a woman Dean had never seen before. She had…well, to be completely honest in describing her, she had the most curvaceous body Dean had ever seen. Her eyes had an ever-present mischievous glint, and her hair was high and curly and sprang off her shoulders with exuberance that Dean would have thought impossible were he not staring it in the face. She was dressed in leather and wielding a gun.

Sam stopped breathing, and Dean knew he was thinking the same thing.

The appearance of this woman, however, was slightly put off by Cas crumpling to the ground and simultaneously vomiting and coughing up blood.

The woman immediately went to assist him, rubbing his back and mumbling soothingly to him. When it appeared he had finished, she helped him lie down on the bed, and went into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. She cleaned his face from the vomit and blood, before setting the towel over the mess Cas had made on the ground. Finally, she turned to Sam and Dean, who were still gawking over what had just happened.

"Thanks for nothing," she said.

Dean cleared his throat. "What's-what's wrong with Cas?"

The woman sighed. "The poor thing used up the last of his power to find me, because apparently you poor saps needed me. That already took enough of a toll on him, traveling through space and time like that, but I had to get him here off of my vortex manipulator." She flashed a thing on her wrist. "It's rough on those who aren't used to it."

"So, who are you exactly?" Sam said, rising from his chair.

"Professor River Song," she said. When she saw that her title made no impression on them, she added, "I'm also the Doctor's wife."

"The Doctor has a wife?" Dean snorted. "Didn't seem like the type, but he did well."

Cas coughed feebly, and a little blood trickled down the side of his mouth. River wiped it away with her thumb. "So you're the Michael sword." She looked Dean up and down, before making an unimpressed noise in the back of her throat. Dean deflated a little.

Sam made one of his signature bitchfaces. "We don't have time for squabbling. Why are you here, Ms. Song?"

River laughed. "It's River, dear. And Cas here was smart enough to know that I was the only person who could help you find the Doctor."

"That'd be great," Dean said, also standing up now. "We think it's time to make a move on Lucifer."

"Well, don't get too excited yet," River warned. "The Doctor's not an angel. He can't just show up when he hears you calling. I have to try and contact him, and if he gets the message, he comes. If he doesn't get it, he doesn't."

"Yeah, well, this is urgent, and that's a little too much guesswork," Dean grumbled.

River moved quickly until she was literally nose-to-nose with Dean. "Listen here," she whispered softly. "You have no idea what you're dealing with. I do. If I were you, I'd do a little less talking and a little more listening." She gave him a small wink, and moved away just as quickly. Dean felt a little lightheaded.

River moved to the window of the motel room. She ducked her head close to her vortex manipulator, punched in a few things, and even whispered to it. After several minutes of this, she turned back to face the two men and the angel.

"I've sent him coordinates," she said. "I'm sure he'll get here as soon as he can."

"Thank you so much, River," Sam said politely.

"Don't thank me, thank your rebel angel," River said. She gazed down the street outside the window of the motel. "He's going to be a few minutes anyway. I might as well make a coffee run." Upon noticing the looks she received from Sam and Dean, she smiled a twinkling smile and said, "What? Just because I travel through time and space and have seen things that your minds can't even comprehend, doesn't mean I don't love a good espresso."

"I'll go with you," Sam said, as though he didn't even mean for the words to come out.

River smiled. "I hope you have money, dear. I'm afraid I spent all mine at a pawn shop nine billion light years away, two hundred thousand years from now."

River and Sam were already buddy-buddy before they walked out the door. Dean almost wanted to go after them too, but a slight snore told him he'd be otherwise preoccupied. He took a look at Cas and for a moment almost felt like giving up. Angels didn't sleep. It appeared Cas was being cut off from Heaven, his power source. But he had already done so much for them this far, and that made Dean resolve that he had to stick with this through the end.

"Thanks, Cas," he whispered.

Donna had fought and fought with the Doctor so he would tell her about what had happened to her that had made her apparently lose time. The Doctor, however, refused every single time, saying he'd tell her later, but never grew impatient with her. She decided to stop asking, because even though she was stubborn as a mule, she trusted the man with her life. If he wasn't telling her something, there must be a sort of good reason, anyway.

Donna was shown into a bedroom by Clara, and she lay down to sleep because what else could she do? She hadn't realized she was so tired, and so she drifted off quickly. She hadn't expected to have such vivid dreams, though.

She found herself waking, not entirely sure if she was in a dream or not anymore. She sat up in her bed as she saw a dark shadow at the foot of her bed.

"And he says the TARDIS is bloody safe, he does," she shrieked, grabbing the lamp off the table at her bedside and preparing to whack the intruder with it.

"No, no, no, no, Donna, it's me."

The lamp slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground. She didn't know if the light bulb broke; she was more concerned with the fact that the Doctor was standing in front of her.

But it wasn't the bow-tied, tweed-jacketed, floppy-haired, young-blooded Doctor she had recently met. It was her Doctor; the long-coated, Converse-wearing, messy-haired, fast-talking Doctor that she had met on that fateful day she was transported against her will into the TARDIS. Her Doctor. The one that just wanted, not to mate, but a mate.

This Doctor smiled. "Hello, Donna," he said, that smirk evident on his face.

"Doctor?" she breathed, scrambling out of her bed and reaching out to him.

He grabbed her hand. "Yeah, it's me. Never thought I'd see you again."

"I never thought I'd see you again," Donna said. "But then I did, but it wasn't…it wasn't you, it was a future you I guess, and he wears a bowtie."

This Doctor looked disturbed by that fact. "A bowtie?"

"He says they're cool."

"I'm not too sure about that."

They stood together for several moments before Donna asked, "So, this is a dream, right?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, no. We just got off the planet Midnight, and we were going off on another adventure when you said you were tired. It looked like you were having a bad dream, so I was going to wake you."

Donna's eyes practically rolled around in her head. "Yeah, I thought we'd just gotten off of there! But then future you said some time had passed, and I was really confused because I couldn't remember any of it. But this makes a lot more sense."

Something in this Doctor's eyes flashed, but Donna couldn't catch what it was. Anyway, she was simply relieved that something finally made sense to her. This was certainly where she belonged, with this Doctor and this life. I mean, that was where it had left off, and that was where it should continue, right?

This Doctor was certainly real, anyway; she could feel the softness of his skin, the roughness of his coat. And she was certainly awake; she pinched herself just to make sure. This was reality. Donna knew it. It only felt right.

"So, no more talk of future-Doctor, alright?" this Doctor said, tipping his head at her. "This is real, Donna. This is real life, because you are extraordinary here."

Donna felt something tugging at the back of her mind, like a warning, but she ignored it. It was probably just her low self esteem again. "I'm nothing special," she said for the umpteenth time.

"You are," this Doctor said, "and I wish I could only make you believe it, if you'd only take what I said to heart and let me in. If you only said yes to me, Donna."

Something's not right, the little voice in Donna's head said. He sounds more and more like a pedophile by the second, Donna, something's not right.

But it is right, Donna argued with herself. I said I was never gonna leave him, and I didn't. He never moved on and found another girl, and another face.

"Just say you're special, Donna, say yes to me."

This bloody isn't right, Donna!

Donna rolled her eyes. "Okay, Doctor. Yes. Now would you bloody stop asking?"

Suddenly, Donna's entire world, even her feeling of existence, vanished from underneath her, and she was falling.