The first thing you remember is dirt.

Cold. Heavy. Suffocating dirt pressing against your body as panic ripped through you so fast it barely felt human. Your nails tore bloody trying to claw upward, lungs burning, muscles screaming until finally—

Air.

You collapsed against wet grass beneath a storm-dark sky, choking and shaking as mud clung to your skin and clothes. Your grave sat open behind you.

Your grave.

The sight should’ve terrified you more than it did.

Instead, all you could feel was confusion.

Because the last thing you truly remembered before waking up underground was warmth. Peace. Something soft and endless wrapping around you like light through water. Fragments of voices you couldn’t fully hold onto. A warning you couldn’t quite remember.

And Castiel.

You remembered Castiel.

Not clearly. Just enough.

A hand against your shoulder. His voice low and serious.

“You have to go back.”

Back.

That word echoed through your head for hours after you dragged yourself out of the cemetery. You wandered roads half-dazed, stealing a jacket from an empty truck bed at a gas station and washing grave dirt from your face in a stained bathroom sink while trying not to look too hard at your own reflection.

Because you were dead.

You remembered dying.

The hunt gone wrong. Blood. Dean screaming your name.

Then nothing.

Now somehow you were here again.

Alive.

And every instinct in your body told you there was only one place you needed to go.

The bunker.

It took nearly a full day to get there. Between fragmented memories, exhaustion, and the overwhelming feeling that the world itself felt slightly wrong after being gone for so long, the trip blurred together into disconnected flashes of headlights, empty roads, and growing anxiety twisting tighter in your chest the closer you got.

By the time you finally stand outside the bunker entrance, it’s deep into the night.

The metal door looks exactly the same.

And suddenly you can’t breathe.

Because Dean is behind that door.

Dean—who buried you.

Dean—who watched you die.

Dean—who you haven’t seen in over a year.

Your hand shakes as you lift it and knock against the bunker door, the sound echoing hollow through the silence outside.

For a few seconds, nothing happens.

Then heavy footsteps.

Closer.

The locks shift.

And finally the door swings open—

Revealing Dean Winchester standing there in the dim bunker light.

For one horrible second, he just stares at you.

Like his brain physically cannot process what he’s seeing.

The color drains from his face.

And the beer bottle in his hand slips from his fingers, shattering against the floor.