A/N: Hello everyone! I'm ridiculously touched by how much love this has already gotten even with just the "previously on" prologue being posted. I'm hoping that this last installment of this project lives up to all the hype I don't deserve! Much love!

This… this was new.

Dean was still gasping in air gratefully, but as he looked around, he had no idea what to make of his surroundings. It looked like a bomb had gone off, the way the trees were flat, the way everything looked like it had been blown back…

Dean couldn't think of any good reason for the cemetery to look like that.

Then again, he couldn't think of any good reason for him to even be alive.

The last thing he remembered, he'd been cutting into people in Hell. He'd been ankle-deep in misery and finding new ways to make it last, make it hurt—and then he was choking on dirt and clawing his way back up out of his own grave, with the memory of Hell still seared in his brain and behind his eyelids every time the dirt fell on his face.

Dean looked around the cemetery, at the evidence that something bad had happened, and laid his head down on the soft grass and dirt. He just wanted to breathe for five minutes. He was tired.

Five minutes turned into ten when no one came to bother him, though he knew he was eventually going to have to pull himself out of the grave. Someone would come looking. Someone had to come looking. A site like that… that was going to draw attention.

With a groan, Dean pulled himself the rest of the way up and out of the dirt, frowning as he looked down at his dirt-covered hands and clothes. It had been years in Hell. He should have… well, he should have been rotted by now. The clothes should have looked way worse.

Something was seriously wrong here.

When Dean still didn't see anyone coming to investigate the scene, he called out a few times for help, but the whole place felt empty in a way that sent shivers down his spine.

His first thought, now that he'd gotten over the initial panic of climbing out of the grave, was that Sam had done something stupid. And it had to be incredibly stupid, too, because it seemed to Dean like Hell had him right where they wanted him. He'd been marching in lockstep to their sadistic fifes and doing everything they wanted him to do, so he didn't see any reason for them to have let him go unless Sam offered them something big. And that in itself was worrying, since Dean didn't want to think about what kind of "big" something Sam even had to offer when there were things like friggin' souls on the line.

Dean shook his head and forced himself to his feet. It was pretty obvious by now that no one was going to come help him, so he might as well get on with it. Figure out where he was, find a phone, figure out where Sam was, stop him from whatever idiocy he was up to…

No rest for the wicked, Dean thought to himself grimly.

And that statement had never been so true for Dean as it was at that moment.

He closed his eyes, pushing the thought to the back of his mind. He needed to focus on finding Sam. He could think about everything else he'd been through some other time. Now wasn't the time to be selfish when Sam was probably in trouble with whatever the heck he'd done to get Dean out.

He wasn't worth whatever Sam had done.

Dean was surprised as he started to take a few steps forward that he felt a little dizzier than usual, and he stopped to keep from stumbling to his knees, taking a deep breath. He had to reorient himself. Everything felt new. Different. Like he wasn't used to moving in his own body.

Then again, he wasn't used to moving in his own body. For one thing, he'd been in Hell for so long that this mortal body was a whole other thing. And for another thing, this didn't feel like the body he'd left behind. Dean knew he'd been a bloody mess when he died, and he knew he had a whole bunch of scars from the life of a hunter on top of that.

But now? Now, he didn't see any of that. He didn't feel any of the old scars. And when he knelt down in the grass to get his balance back and checked what he could see of his body… He couldn't see any scars he recognized.

What was weird was that he seemed to have a new scar that he didn't recognize.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. He didn't have time to think about how weird this was. Or wonder what kind of creature could have left him with something like that. He had to focus.

But closing his eyes was a bad idea, because the dark of his eyelids brought back a whole bunch of things he really didn't want to remember. So he opened them again quickly and then swore under his breath.

Find a phone. Get to Sam. Deal with the rest of it later. You're probably going back to Hell anyway once you figure out what Sam did, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and get this done.

Dean took a deep breath, held it, and then got to his feet, staggering several steps across the too-flat expanse of the cemetery. There wasn't anything he could lean against or hold onto when the trees had all been blown back like they were, so it wasn't until he got further into the treeline that he could take another break, get his breath, and get going.

Every time he did that, he felt a little stronger, until he finally stumbled on a road. From there, he was able to follow it back until he could find a place that had a phone he could use.

Find a phone. Get to Sam.

He was so focused on what he was doing that he didn't notice who the person was who was using the pay phone ahead of him, but when he did, he took a full step back, his eyes wide. "River?"

River Song turned his way and broke into a grin. "Just who I was looking for. Hello, Dean."

Dean shook his head. He should have thought of the possibility of some kind of Doctor-related nonsense. He supposed a few decades of torture was good enough reason not to have space travel on the top of his list of priorities, but then, it had been the case often enough that when something happened that Dean couldn't place on the supernatural scale, it came from the Doctor's kind of trouble. "So, what's the story?"

"Do I have to have a story to come see an old friend?" River shot back, though the teasing sparkle in her eyes said that there was, in fact, a story.

"Usually," Dean said. "And the timing is kind of suspect."

"It is, isn't it?" River asked, then tipped her head toward a nearby bus bench so the two of them could go somewhere to sit down—which Dean appreciated, though he wasn't going to say as much out loud. "I'm not going to ask you if you're alright, because that would be a waste of time," she said once they were seated.

"See, this is why we get along—you talk sense," Dean said, leaning back against the back of the bench.

The air rang with silence between them for a long moment before River spoke up again. "I know you're headed back to Sam, but I also know you just came back from the dead," she said.

Dean shook his head. "You know, having a time-traveling friend is a lot less fun when you realize it means they know all your secrets before you know them."

"You're preaching to the choir, my friend," River said. She watched him for a moment longer before she tapped her vortex manipulator on her wrist. "If I promise to bring you back at exactly this moment in time so you don't lose any time finding your brother, would you agree to break in your new liver with some drinks with me?"

Dean raised an eyebrow at that, smiling in spite of the serious situation. "No way could I turn that down."

"Didn't think so," River agreed with a smile before she grabbed his arm—and they were off.